


Seven Deadly Sins — Hijack Week, December 2016

by alec



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Angst, Clubbing, Colonialism, Fluff, Gaming, Hijack Week 2016, M/M, Pining, Sickfic, so much fucking angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:04:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alec/pseuds/alec
Summary: The Seven Deadly Sins, experienced in various ways by the two boys that keep us all here together.Lust: longing, desire, sexuality, love?Gluttony: excessiveness, overindulgenceGreed: pursuit, longingSloth: laziness, inactionWrath: vengeance, anger, hateEnvy: desire, jealousy, sadnessPride: hubris, superiority, flawlessness





	1. Lust (15 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>   
> 

“I’m going on record—right now—that I am against every single thing in this plan, that I don’t want to be here, and that I reserve every right to complain to you before, during, _and_ after tonight about all of the crazy shit that you’re dragging me into that I don’t want to be doing and that will probably end with some kind of disaster that could totally have been avoided by us not going at all.”

“Hiccup, you’re already doing a great enough job of complaining before. Don’t try to set the bar so high for what we should expect afterwards.” Merida didn’t bother looking up from her phone. Her legs were crossed one over the other and she was making no effort to reduce how much space she was taking up on the seat of the public bus. Hiccup, meanwhile, was doing his best to fade himself out of existence. It was a Friday night on a downtown-bound city bus headed in the direction of all of the college bars and dance clubs; the undergrad population at the university was approximately nine thousand, and around half of them were on this bus.

“Look, I’m just saying—”

“Hicccuppppp, you’re _always_ ‘just saying’. That’s precisely why we’re bringing you.” Rapunzel never failed to make herself look far prettier than any human had any right being, and her blonde hair was swept behind her ears save a small chunk that hung down in front of her eyes in such perfect arrangement that it looked as though it were delicately set during a photoshoot. “You _never_ let yourself enjoy _anything_.”

“Okay, now that’s a _gross_ mischaracterisation of me, and you know—”

“Oh man, Hiccup. You’re gonna get a _ton_ of ladies talking like that at a dance club.”

Hiccup shot a withering glance to the redhead. “I’m not going here to get a ton of ladies.”

“Well even if guys have lower standards, you’ll still turn them off talking like that too.”

Hiccup turned back to face the blonde across from him, who was smiling as though she hadn’t said anything wrong. No matter how frequently it happened, Hiccup would never successfully wrap his head around the fact that this girl was the most sarcastic and sly one of their group. Rapunzel managed to put off a constant air of innocence, which was how she lured you in.

“I’m not going to have fun, and I’m going to leave after forty minutes.” Hiccup crossed his arms. “And that’s not me predicting. That’s me telling you that I’m leaving after forty minutes.”

“Hiccup,” Merida turned to face the boy. “What are you so afraid of? That you’ll find a guy there who will take you home and pull that giant stick out of your ass for you?”

“What the hell, you guys? This is just, gang up on Hiccup day? I don’t deserve this.”

Merida and Rapunzel both scoffed on cue.

* * *

Twenty-two minutes later, the bus arrived at a stop on the far end of the city. Nearly the entire bus piled off. Hiccup took a huge gulp of fresh air the moment he was free, and stretched his compressed and bent arms. He looked back to see how many people would still be on the bus but was met with an opaque wall of white fog across the windows, built from a hotbox of human body heat mixed with a crisp autumn night.

As it turned out, the line to get into the club at only 10:30 at night was wrapped around the corner. Hiccup wouldn’t know. He’d never been to a club before. Hell, he’d never even been to a regular bar before. Which was something he was perfectly fine with. That was what he wanted out of life, and it was an easy wish to fulfil. Merida and Rapunzel just didn’t realise that people came in various shades of character and that what they judged happiness and desire on wasn’t what everybody else did. So now Hiccup was forced to shiver and grip his arms—covered in _far_ , far too thin of fabric, because Rapunzel said it was cute and that only cute things could be worn to the club. They were still shuffling their feet towards the front as the clock on Hiccup’s phone vibrated the start of the witching hour.

What, the fuck. $15 to get into a place he didn’t want to be? Hiccup had actually started walking away before he was very rudely bodyblocked by a burly man wearing a vest. This was officially a kidnapping.

“We’re going to go to the bar and get a drink!” Rapunzel shouted into Hiccup’s ear only a few seconds after he was hit with a wave of heat and the scent of human filth and sex. Oh. Yeah. This was totally his place. This felt wonderful. How was this supposed to be such a bastion of sex and primal urges? Were men even able to get boners in clubs?

Hiccup’s eyebrows dropped in answer of his unspoken question. Of course they could. Men could get hard anywhere.

Hiccup was tugged up to the bar and Rapunzel and Merida leaned between people, pushing them out of the way politely enough that to respond at all would have been rude on the other people’s parts. From the angle that the girls made with their backs to him, it was very apparent that they were highlighting their assets to the bartenders. Which seemed to work quite well, as one of the men stopped talking to a guy mid-order to come over and serve them.

“What would you like, sweetie?” Merida leaned back and whisper-shouted into Hiccup’s ear. Hiccup smiled and shook his head, mouthing the word ‘no’. Merida frowned. “Look, you’re going to have an even _worse_ time at a club if you try to stay sober.”

 _Ah, what an establishment to seek out._ “I’ll take my chances.”

Rapunzel and Merida turned around a couple minutes later, brightly coloured drinks in their hands and credit cards stored securely in the register. Rapunzel took a sip of her drink through the straw and smiled around the plastic, before opening her eyes wide and nodding towards the dancefloor. At this point, protesting had proven to be less than zero percent effective, so Hiccup just trudged along with them. The sooner this happened, the sooner it would stop happening.

Aaaaand, it was every bit just as uncomfortable as Hiccup had expected it to be. Too many people—everywhere. And this music was impossible to dance to. Not that Hiccup really _knew_ how to dance. At all. But that didn't make the music not terrible and nobody seemed to be on the same rhythm. Most of the people around him were just grinding on each other and having sex _clothed_ in ways Hiccup wouldn’t want to have sex _naked_. Hiccup looked over after ten minutes and saw the head of one guy’s dick poke out from his waistband, and that was it. He didn’t even bother motioning towards the bar—he just looked at Merida in the eyes with a completely dead look and walked away.

Hiccup didn’t really want a drink. There was still half a cupcake at home from the birthday party yesterday, and that sounded really good. As did the frozen french fries that were sitting in his freezer. They would probably take him twenty, thirty minutes to make—maybe longer, since he’d need to wait for the oven to finish preheating. They came ready-seasoned with spices on them, but Hiccup had some garlic powder and ranch dressing and he’d be able to mix the two of those together to create a sauce he could driz—

 _Who the fuck is that_.

On the other side of the dance floor, by the fogged-over floor-to-ceiling windows, shoved together into too much and too little space at the same time, was the most attractive person Hiccup had ever seen. He was tall and his pale skin stood out against the black of the wall and windows. His figure was all height and no width, his body lithe and toned, something Hiccup was far too aware as he stared at his bare chest moving in time with the music. There was an opened, unzipped long blue hoodie draped over his form, baggy and loose, moving in large motions with every tiny movement of the god’s actions, so at odds with how form-fitting his pants were. The hood was hung haphazardly over his white hair, which even from this distance looked to be soaked with persperation and humidity, most likely clinging to his forehead with sweat. The coloured lights of the dancefloor played over his bare skin, and Hiccup started when he realised that the blue that coloured his face beneath his bangs wasn’t moving; there was blue body paint covering his eyes and ending at his nose, and on anybody else it would have looked garish and terrible but on this boy it seemed only to serve to drive Hiccup wilder.

Hiccup didn’t become aware that he had been staring for minutes now until a girl backed up into him, nearly tripping over him, the beer in her hand threatening to upend itself all over his shirt. The boy was an amazing dancer. Hiccup might not know how to dance himself or by what metric to judge someone else, but it was hypnotising to watch him move, even from this far away. His body flowed with the music in the most sensuous way, and it was like watching sin incarnate trying to tempt him. Hiccup’s face was on fire watching the slow way that he moved his hips with the music, then the sharp thrusts, and the way that he could bend himself over and in all directions. And the control he had over his hands, and his body— Hiccup’s heart was racing a mile a minute and whole sections of his brain were shutting down. Not from arousal, but from awe. Which was _definitely_ not a good thing, and the rational part of his brain told him that he needed to get away _now_. Maybe it was time to grab that drink that Rapunzel and Merida had suggested earlier.

Except, as it turned out, not having breasts and trying to get the attention of a bartender at a club was nigh impossible. There were so many people at the bar, either milling about or waiting to order their own drinks, and Hiccup had a hard enough time trying to move his way to the bar. Merida and Rapunzel had simply pushed people aside, which wasn’t something that Hiccup was going to be able to do for a whole _host_ of reasons. Then it was even more of a disaster trying to get the bartender to notice him. They were still just as easily distracted by women as they had been when Hiccup first arrived.

It only occurred to him as the bartender turned to face him finally that _Hiccup didn’t actually know what to order_. They were probably going to expect more out of him than “beer” or “that coloured drink you made my friend earlier,” and that was a problem because Hiccup’s knowledge of these things wasn’t even lacking—it just wasn’t there. Having to shout out his confusion made it even worse, and he wasn’t entirely sure which beer he had ordered even as he handed over his card.

“I had a feeling you’d order a beer. You just had that look about you,” came a deep voice from _very_ close behind Hiccup. His body instinctively reacted and he jolted, but there wasn’t much room as the other guy was leaning in on him far too much. Grabbing the beer bottle in one hand, Hiccup turned around—

—directly into the arms of the boy. The perfect boy.

Heat rolled off of the boy in waves as he moved even closer to Hiccup. His arms were still in the front pocket of his unzipped hoodie but Hiccup could feel the boy’s presence all around him. The air of the club was warm but the boy’s breath was warmer still, and it hovered and roamed quickly across Hiccup’s skin in the mere inches between the two bodies. The other boy flashed a smile—perfect in every way—and in the dark club with masses of dark greys and blues creating an endless sea of movement all around them, the boy in front of Hiccup shone radiantly like a fallen angel who had kept his wings.

Anything and everything that Hiccup could think to say wasn't able to move from his brain to his mouth. A moment of silence and the boy smirked.

“My friends saw you watching me while I was dancing. They seemed to think you liked what you saw, and I have to say, you offer me quite a lot to enjoy myself.” The boy’s impossibly thin lips curled upwards in a lopsided grin, and he allowed his blink to last mere milliseconds longer than it should have. In the space left behind in the wake of his closed eyes Hiccup could see a cosmos of stars, minuscule specs of glitter—totally imperceptible to the eye—shone at Hiccup from against the blue warpaint smeared across the boy’s eyes and nose. Hiccup wondered if he took the boy’s hand, if it wouldn’t also be coated in blue from the beautiful galaxies he had made on his face, and then he wondered what about that thought made it one of the most attractive things he’d ever thought.

“How about I let you stop me when you become uncomfortable, mon chéri?” And with that Hiccup, found his free hand wrapped in a cool grip and himself on the dancefloor, his back pressed up against the dark and sticky surface of a pillar.

And then the boy was moving on top of him, dancing slowly, moving in time with the music. Hiccup was still speechless, but he found that he couldn’t stay motionless. He didn’t know how to dance, and he had his hand filled with a beer, and his heart might have been racing faster than it ever had before, but the boy’s fingers began to trace themselves across his sides and Hiccup could feel himself know how to move under the boy’s wordless instruction. It was impossible that they fit so well together, that their bodies could be so in sync—that _Hiccup_ was able to be so in sync with anybody. Hiccup wasn’t sure where his beer had gone. It had been in his hand, and then they’d started dancing, and his hand had made its way from the boy’s back up to the hair exposed by his now-removed hood. All Hiccup was aware of was the boy, the sway of their bodies together, the vibrations he could feel through his bones, and—

Oh—

There’s no way that’s—

 _Oh my god_ —

As if for good measure, the other boy pushed his hips forward, rocking against Hiccup’s groin with force enough to make Hiccup whimper and pull the boy flush against him. The other boy’s lower lip came into view again from behind the teeth he’d been biting with. Hiccup wasn’t sure if the boy had ever closed his eyes; whenever Hiccup had been strong enough to open his eyes against the pleasure, the winter blue irises were staring deep into him, as though trying to learn all of Hiccup’s secrets.

“Hey, do you think you’re done here?” the boy whispered into Hiccup’s ear, and Hiccup shivered because whether or not the boy had actually run his tongue along the shell of Hiccup’s ear, Hiccup's body knew what that would feel like now. “I’m sure there are other places we could go to.”

Hiccup’s heart was in his throat, and his words weren’t finding his tongue. Other than curses and breathy invocations to gods, Hiccup had barely spoken to the boy. But that didn’t seem to be a problem for either of them, especially because the other boy seemed to know _so well_ what Hiccup meant when Hiccup nodded his head, even if Hiccup himself wasn’t totally sure what he meant.

The boy grabbed Hiccup’s hand and began leading them in the direction of the entrance. He made a brief look over his shoulder at his friends—or, rather, that’s what Hiccup assumed he did. There was too much movement to be sure of anything other than the very present, very real boy leading him towards their exit.

Hiccup didn’t know the other boy’s name. The other boy didn’t know _Hiccup’s_ name. They didn’t know where each other lived, or where they went to school, or if the other boy was even _in_ school.

So many thoughts were crossing through his mind as the other boy dragged him into the parking lot, a car beeping remotely nearby. So many thoughts as Hiccup opened the door with shaky fingers. As the other boy grabbed Hiccup’s hair roughly and pulled him over the armrest, whispering “I don’t feel like waiting to start this.”

The only thing that wasn’t on Hiccup’s mind was letting Merida and Rapunzel know he was leaving early. He had been very clear with them that he was going to leave after forty minutes, and Hiccup was sure he’d stayed for almost a full hour.


	2. Gluttony (16 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jackson had left home with _plenty_ of time, and not even because his mother had called during breakfast to wish him luck and suggest that he leave with plenty of time. This was the first day of his first internship—ever—and Jackson wanted to impress the local branch of child protective services. They had taken a risk with hiring him—they had to make a bet that the benefits he would bring would outweigh the problems he would _also_ bring. And they’d made that bet in his favour, so he was going to do everything in his power to prove to them that they had made the best choice. Being nervous about everything and feeling ready for a twelve mile jog had little to do with his decision to start the two mile walk to work an hour in advance.

 _As it turned out_ , it was definitely a good thing that he had. As a college sophomore, Jackson wasn’t exactly accustomed to being up before the sun had had its first cup of coffee. The streets of Burgess were completely different than what he'd learned after two years now, and he made it to the front door with only minutes to spare after embarrassingly needing to pull out his phone and map.

“Uh, hi—good morning. I’m Jackson Overland, the new intern?” The receptionist smiled warmly at Jackson and ushered him through the door behind her, into the office proper.

* * *

Jackson wanted to lay down for seven thousand years and sleep through all of it. The first days of school were bad, but they were never this exhausting. The amount of paperwork he had needed to fill out throughout the day to satisfy the Human Resources department must have been a joke. And some of the information was so specific that he didn’t know some of it _himself_ , which made even less sense as to why _they_ would need to know it. Did his mother’s pancreas work or did she suffer from any recurrent pancreatic issues over the past seven years? Who would know something like that off the top of their head? And then spending the afternoon trying to settle into the offices. He only had a Macbook at home and the entire office was outfit with PCs. That left him about four steps behind where he should have been, and then it was meetings, more words, more phrases, and then straight into casefiles. Jackson’s feet dragged heavily on the pavement.

This wasn’t a regret of choice of career. Just a regret that Saturday didn’t come after Monday on the calendar.

 _Oh sweet baby Jesus in the manger, visited by wise men, what was that_ smell? The smell of breads and sugars and fruits was wafting through the air, and the bell chime of a door opening sounded before Jackson was aware he had even begun moving.

“Welcome to _Perfect Kneads_!” came a small voice from behind the counter. It was a woman, probably a year or so older than Jackson, and she was smiling at him with her arm draped over the glass cabinet cover. Her friendly personality beckoned him forward.

Cakes and cupcakes and breads and biscuits and cookies and pastries and danishes and muffins. Holy god, there were so many options to choose from and all of them looked far more delicious than anything based in reality had any right to.

“Oh look, and here comes another option for you to choose from,” the lady above him said with an audible smile, and there was movement from behind the counter as cupcakes coated in icing and fondant flowers slid into place just a bit above Jackson’s eye level. Through the glass behind them, Jackson could see the chef who had brought them out, and he forgot to keep looking for something to purchase.

The other boy was right at Jackson’s own age, but the structure of his face made him look younger than that. Where Jackson was all angles, this boy was all curves, and where Jackson’s eyes and hair were dark browns, this boy’s were all light hazel and coffee. Slightly curved teeth were just barely visible behind separated lips. But on his head was the largest chef’s hat that Jackson had ever seen. It might not have _actually_ been that large, but by virtue of the fact that nobody else he could see was wearing one, and that this one was clearly meant for a chef with a larger head, the hat managed to dwarf everything else about the boy.

It was the cutest sight that Jackson had seen in months, and he was immediately smitten.

“Good work, Hayden. You’ve had the cupcakes out for ten seconds and it looks like someone already wants one,” the woman joked, and the boy— _Hayden_ —blushed, smiling as well. _At Jackson_. Which was probably just because there were two people he could look at, and he only had two eyes, and one of them was bent over and looking up at him at an angle through distortion glass, but Jackson couldn’t stop his heart from jack-hammering loudly in his chest as he slammed the money down on the counter maybe a bit too hard, took the cupcake from the woman, and stumbled out the door with a litany of stuttered thank-you’s.

By the time the bell chimed in the distance that the door had closed, Jackson was a full storefront down the street from Perfect Kneads. And he wanted to fall over and curl into a ball from sheer embarrassment.

He sniffed at the cupcake, peeling back the paper cup on the side and taking a bite. And it was the most delicious bite of cupcake Jackson had ever had in his life.

_Fuck._

* * *

_Jackson, you_ CANNOT _go into that place._

You have _NO_ self control. That would be a horrible mistake. You have an addictive personality.

Jackson, you’re just starting to make money. This is literally your fourth day of work. You haven’t even been paid. Each one of those cupcakes is $4. You’ve spent $16 already. That’s a full hour of work, pre-tax. You _literally_ cannot afford to keep this up.

“Welcome back to Perfect Kneads, stranger!” The smiling face of the woman at the front counter was disarming. Jackson wondered if that was why they hired her. He briefly thought that they should still replace her with Hayden, the cute baker boy—but only because his hat was so comically oversized. “What’re you gonna have today?”

“Uhhhhh.” Jackson took a scan over the infinite number of choices on the trays behind all of the glass. There were too many to choose from but he still— “Are these all of them? Or is there another coming out? He usually brings out something else as well about now? The chef, uh, baker, the one my age—Hayden, I think?” Jackson was furiously red, and was definitely trying to downplay the fact that Jackson knew the other boy’s name even as he was struggling to remember the name of the blonde girl he sat next to at work. The woman behind the counter smiled and turned her head around towards the kitchen.

“Hey Hiccup, you finished with those cookies? You’ve got a fan out here who’d like something better than what I can make.” She turned back and smiled, and Jackson was waving his arms frantically. _Abort mission, this is horrible, no, so bad, disaster, run away, no._

“That’s—I didn’t mean—No, everything out here is great—I’m just wanna be know that it, that like I have the—”

“Well you _are_ really liberal with the shortening, Kara. I don’t exactly blame him.” The boy’s head was peaked out around the corner to the kitchen proper, and at such an angle that his hat began to fall down the side of his head. A freckled hand appeared from behind the doorway as well and pushed the hat back on his head. “Hello again, by the way! I’ve got a batch of cookies I’m just finishing up now—last one for tonight—if you’d like that.”

Jackson was on the spot and everybody was waiting for his answer and the pressure was real. There was only one option. “Y-yeah. Cookies sound great—I mean, one cookie, that is. Just the one. I only need one.” Jackson held up a single finger while he spoke and by the time he finished, he was looking at the embarrassing traitor and considering if a human _really_ needed ten fingers anyway. Hayden nodded his head and then disappeared behind the door-frame.

Kara smiled as Jackson walked over wordlessly to pay in advance. His hand was definitely shaking as he handed over his credit card, which earned him a laugh from the baker.

“We’ve worked together for about a year now and sarcasm and mockery is a language he and I are fluent in. Sorry if you felt weird getting caught up in that.” Her meant-to-be sincere words were at odds with the evident glee in her voice. She slid the card and returned it to Jackson along with the receipt. “The little Hiccup is just so damn good at it that you feel like you need to bring ammo to the knife fight.”

“H-hiccup?”

Kara snorted. “Yeah. The little twerp can’t drink milk without getting the hiccups. I mean, who works at a bakery and can’t drink milk? Like, you could be a chef at _any_ other kind of place and not need to kill yourself with lactose, but with Hayden, he probably took it as a challenge.” Kara sighed wistfully. “He’s an adorable little one. Keeps that giant hat on because he says it makes him feel like an official baker. Did you know that nobody has worn one of those since the 1980s? When I first started here, I had a crush on him too, but unfortunately for me and fortunately for you, I think you’d have a lot better of a chance than I did.”

“Kara, not cool. Don’t just unpack other people’s lives for the fun of it.” Hayden slid the tray of cookies into the top shelf and adjusted the display tag while he shot her a withering glare. “You continually fail to realise just how well your voice carries.” He handed Jackson the cookie in a paper bag. “And I told you to stop trying to play matchmaker for me. _Especially_ when I’m working. Or, also—ever.”

The other baker just raised her hands in mock resignation towards Jackson. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. What can you do, huh?”

“Ha—haha, yeah. What can you, uh, do? Anyways, so, I’ve gotta—bye.” And out the door.

Jackson was fairly certain he could hear Hayden say ‘Can you _please_ stop scaring away all of our customers? You literally have the one job’ before the doors closed.

* * *

_You can never show your face in there again after yesterday. That was single-handedly the most embarrassing moment of your entire life. She’s a monster and you cannot survive another encounter like that._

“Hey Hic, guess who’s back?”

_You fucking piece of shit, Jackson Overland._

* * *

Two weeks continued like this. Sometimes it was for comfort food after a long day of dealing with innocent children in unspeakably shitty situations (there was very little easing into it with the team when there were as many cases for as few employees in the branch). Other times it was because the bakery was on the way home, the smells wafted through the air, and he woke up at 6:00am every morning, on the dot; by the time 5:10pm rolled around, Jackson _deserved_ a treat. He wasn’t continuing to go because of the cute baker.

I mean, it wasn’t like Jackson was _denying_ that the baker was cute. Or that Jackson was lonely and wouldn’t exactly mind a date. Or that the other boy could make him smile, or that Hayden had this way of causing Jackson’s stomach to churn just by looking over at him. Or that he was really cute and was an amazing chef so _clearly_ he was really talented, and he was funny and creative and his wit was superb and that Jackson wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to convince himself of because he had been distracted by his thoughts and now he was here.

“Is it that late in the day already? I could have sworn that it was the 3:00pm rush just a few minutes ago.” Hayden was stretching behind the counter, alone today. Jack did his best to make the deep breath as unnoticeable as possible.

“Yeah, well, you know, that’s how time... does.”

_Holy Jesus Fuck, Jackson, it’s no wonder you’re single._

Hayden snorted in an unfairly attractive way, before walking over to the cupcake section of the display. “We have a chocolate raspberry one today that’s pretty great.”

“That sounds fine, I’ll do that one. But you know that they’re all really great.”

“Yeah, we definitely get that a lot. Or, that they’re ‘perfect’, because a lot of older customers like to think they’re hot shit and the first people to make that joke.” Hayden handed the cupcake box across the display to Jackson. In turn, Jackson handed him his credit card, which had been swiped on the small iPad reader far too many times over the past month. He signed his name and left a tip, suddenly realising that this was the first time that Hayden would see that Jackson was leaving a 25% tip. Which, for a $4 cupcake, wasn’t exactly a _lot_ , but it was still 25%. Jackson was flush red as Hayden handed back his credit card, but their fingertips touched briefly and tickled Jackson’s skin, sending a jolt of electricity through Jackson’s body and soul. Then it was over and Jackson was excusing himself as politely and as quickly as he could. He didn’t slow down until he was at home, laying in his bed, screaming into his pillow in at least four different kinds of angst.

* * *

Later that night, Jackson stepped on the scale as he got out of the shower. It was just a curiosity. He almost never did. His body required an ungodly amount of calories on a daily basis, so not once in Jackson’s life had weight ever been an issue.

He was six pounds heavier than he normally was.

Which, six pounds wasn’t a whole lot, and considering Jackson’s weight, wasn’t a problem at all. But it was _six whole pounds_. On a boy whose caloric budget started with the number three.

Jackson groaned and evaluated the pros and cons of quitting his job and moving to a remote mountain cave.

* * *

He was actually gaining weight because of the daily visits to the bakery. Something had to change.

But Jackson was Jackson, and Jackson had a very difficult time denying himself something he wanted. And he really wasn’t able to lie to himself anymore and say there weren’t two things he wanted out of that bakery.

It was right around midnight following the first twenty-four hours of his rehabilitation that Jackson decided he didn’t _really_ need sleep the way he needed cupcakes and boys, and resolved to wake up an extra hour in the morning for a daily run. Every day. For the rest of his life. If that meant that he was going to be quite a bit more tired at work, it was what it was.

“I haven’t seen you around here for, what, two days?” Hayden smiled as Jackson came in. “Was beginning to wonder if you were dead.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. I tried to give up your cupcakes, but they’re too disgustingly addictive.”

“The secret is substituting approximately 45% of the plain white flour for freshly-cut cocaine.” Hayden didn’t even bother asking as he handed Jackson a lemon cupcake. Jackson wasn’t really fond of lemon sweets, but Hayden was an impeccable judge of taste, and at this point he could tell Jackson to eat stale bread and he probably would. Jackson wasn’t familiar with having crushes, but it seemed like he was the kind of boy to be a puppy on a leash.

“Well, you’re forcing me to take up running in the morning so that I don’t gain weight.” Hayden cocked an eyebrow at that.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, actually. I don’t actually _know_ anything about you. Like what you do, or where you are around here. You’re just kind of this tall boy who comes in here at precisely the same time everyday.”

“Well, I work with child services. We’re about four blocks down south of here between Elm and Birch. I mean, I don’t _work_ work there. I’m just a student, but I have an internship there.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. And, you know, it was a bit of a gamble when I first started. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go into this, or into another area of casework. I thought about here, or working with hospitals instead. But I really like it here. I feel like I’m _doing_ something with myself. Not that I wouldn’t be if I was working in a hospital. But I work with this small kid—I can’t give you his name, but he’s like six years old and has the chubbiest cheeks and they jiggle whenever he laughs. And today, I snuck him some candy and tiny toy when I went to visit him, and he smiled so hard he started crying.” Jackson couldn’t help himself from smiling, enough so that he had to look down at his feet. “He said that it was the first toy that he’d had since Christmas, since the parents are both out of work right now. He didn’t let go of me for the rest of the visit. And I mean, I know that I’m not changing stuff on a global scale—like, it’s just one kid, and I get that. But I’m actually making an impact in the rest of someone’s life, and it feels _good_. No, it feels _great_ and I— Oh Jesus, I’m sorry. You just wanted to know where I worked.”

Hayden was beaming. It was such a genuine and earnest smile that Jackson’s heart threatened to catch fire. And it was meant all for him. “No, go on. I’d like to hear more.”

So Jackson did.

* * *

“Do you have anything special for August? Like pumpkin spice stuff? I’m not really into pumpkin spice per se, but I’ve never actually _had_ it so I can’t say for sure. And there’s a lot of hype over it and—oh, hey, you actually _do_ have pumpkin spice. I’ll take one of those.”

Jackson looked up at Hayden, and was actually taken aback that the boy looked... nervous.

“I’m sorry, I—I can’t sell that one to you today.” He bit his lip. Jackson wasn’t sure where this joke was going to go.

“Are you trying to cut me off? You can’t do this to me, man. My body has cravings now.” Hayden looked behind him nervously at the timer, and worry was settling into Jackson’s stomach rapidly. “Well, uh, hey—how about this one? The, uh, french vanilla? Wow. I never realised how many of your flavours sound like ice cream.”

“I—Actually, I can’t really sell any of these to you, Jackson.”

“Oh.”

So that was what it felt like to have hope crushed. Jackson wasn’t even sure why he felt betrayed or dumped, even.

“I guess, I guess I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow then, I gue—” The timer went off in the kitchen and Hayden literally jumped.

“I’ll be right back—uh—yeah—I’ll—just, be right back, okay?” Hayden was making movements like he was trying to pacify a wild beast before disappearing into the kitchen.

Jackson was too wounded to get his hopes up. But, at the same time, Jackson hadn’t had a crush since the second grade, so he was also foolish enough _to_ get his hopes up.

When Hayden returned, he was holding a special white box—one of their fancier takeout boxes, though it hadn’t been adorned with anything in particular.

“I, uh, I can’t really _sell_ this one to you, but if you’d like to, well, have it? You can have it.” And Hayden stuck his hands out awkwardly. Jackson was trembling as he took it out of Hayden’s hands.

Inside was a single cupcake, coated with icing, a large fondant flower. He could tell through the tin that it was chocolate, but with large white chocolate chips smattered throughout it. There was a tiny yellow dot with smaller black dots and little white dots that, the last time he had seen it, Jackson had figured out was supposed to be a bee.

It was the very first cupcake he had eaten here.

Across the top, in still more icing, was written: “Coffee?”

“I mean, I can—I can definitely sell you something else here, if you want. You don’t need to eat that one. Actually, no, nevermind, that was really dumb. That’s so out of season, the tastes are probably all wrong and I probably made it wrong and—”

“I’d love to get coffee with you, Hayden.” The other boy was so uncharacteristically nervous, and he froze in place. “I’d love to get coffee with you.”

Both boys were entirely scarlet as they stared at each other for a long pause, silence filling the space between and around them.

All at once, Hayden raced back to the kitchen, the sound of metal utensils hitting the floor and a muffled _’Fuck’_ making their way back to the front of the shop. Jackson let out an unexpectedly loud laugh, though it was only 2% humour and 98% nerves.

When Hayden returned, he was holding the twin to Jackson’s own cupcake. There was definitely a lack of confidence as he reached his cupcake-filled hand out towards Jackson, and it took Jackson a long moment to realise what he was supposed to do. Jackson removed his own from the box, and touched the two cupcakes together, as though they were making a toast at a dinner party.

“That right there? That was the corniest and lamest thing I’ve ever seen, much less been a part of,” Jackson said after he swallowed his mouthful of cupcake first. Hayden followed suit moments later.

“Yeah, well, you went ahead and did it too, so—”

The tiny bumblebee had transferred to Hayden’s nose, a large dot amidst a great expanse of tiny freckles. It would take the rest of the night for Jackson to accept that this was happening, but he wasn’t for a second going to risk questioning it.

“I most certainly did.”


	3. Greed (17 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dinner tasted excellent. Jack hadn’t had a lot of practise with making Indian food from scratch but Jack had really nailed this one. And the drinks were the right mix of alcohol and taste, so that wasn’t what was pissing Hiccup off either. But Hiccup was _definitely_ pissed off. It was like a dark cloud hanging over him, and with Jack eating in practised silence across from him, Hiccup knew he wasn’t the only person to be able to see it. Jack reached for the basket that he had put the naan in and extracted himself a piece. He spooned a helping of bismati rice onto his plate before taking a quiet breath, but then chose not to say anything. After an eternity of silence, Hiccup couldn’t take it anymore.

“You know what’s fucking ridiculous? The fucking price of linen right now. It’s too goddamn high and the price only keeps rising and that’s fucked up because it’s not like there’s been a global increase in demand for it!”

Jack blinked in surprise at Hiccup, momentary confusion written across his face. “Uh... you’re talking about Gateway to Mora, right?”

“I’m talking about Gateway to fucking Mora.” Hiccup crossed his arms, and scowled. “All I want to do is finish crafting my tier six armour for my Demonologist, so I can finally go on the fucking new raid from Terra Arcana, but instead I’m stuck here fucking harvesting grain so I can make my own fucking linen scraps— _by hand_ —because the price has _doubled_ within the past week. A single patch of linen used to cost about twenty five silver, but now it’s pushing sixty two. There’s no new expansion, there’s no new class—fuck, there’s not even a new armour set. I would know, because I’ve been staring at the armour pages on the wiki for three weeks now. I’ve got a lot of gold on Yrerra and Por’thass, but I don’t have _enough_ , and even if I _did_ , it’d be pushing me on the edge of bankruptcy when there’s _absolutely_ no reason for it other than somebody decided they wanted to be Magna Douche and buy out as much of the market as they could. Do you know how many scraps of linen I still need to finish my armour set?”

Jack looked incredibly off-guard and uncomfortable with the sudden shift of focus to him. “Uh.. a lot?”

“Literally about fifty _thousand_ fucking pieces of linen. I mean, who the fuck needs _fifty thousand_ pieces of linen anyways? How big are these pieces of linen? Microscopic? These designers are fucking imbeciles. My character won’t be able to summon demons—fuck, he wouldn’t even be able to move. He’d just be a giant ball of fucking linen scraps. I need _ten thousand pieces of linen_ in order to make my gloves. I mean, _what the fuck_? That’s so incredibly imbalanced! You don’t just fucking jack the number of materials every recipe requires because you felt like players weren’t putting enough capital into the materials market!” Jack’s eyes were wide at this point but Hiccup was fired up and couldn’t stop even if he had wanted to. “Do you know what I’m wearing right now? I’m wearing tier two. I tried to get into one of the lower raids yesterday so I could at least _practise_ my Demonologist build and I got fucking laughed at. Like _excuuuse_ me. It’s a fucking level fifty raid. Like seriously, you need to be elite for that? Hah. I checked their stats and they had almost ten _thousand_ less achievement points than I do. But _I’m_ the one who would hold back the party? And I was level 83. You had a level 56 in the party. Jesus, get off your high horse. So now I’m stuck not even playing this character that I’ve already poured whole _weeks_ of consecutive gameplay hours into but I can’t do _shit_ with because the hardest fucking boss tag-team in the entire game is the stock market and some dude who right now is probably jacking off to female children’s cartoon characters.” Hiccup was breathing deeply and his rice had spilt on the table. He felt light-headed from the exertion, and he wished he could say that he felt better, but even venting out the issues to Jack wasn’t going to help.

Of course, it especially wasn’t going to help because Jack didn’t play the game. Or, any games, really. He sometimes played endless runners on his mobile, but that was the extent of Jack as a video gamer. It was one of the (very) few things that reminded Hiccup that his fiancé was, in fact, not Perfect.

“Aren’t you in a group—”

“—you mean a ‘guild’?”

“—Yeah, that. Aren’t you in a guild with other people? You Skype with them all the time. Wouldn’t they be willing to help you?”

Hiccup grumbled and crossed his arms. “Yeah, they would. But I don’t want to ask them—because I want this to be _my_ accomplishment!” he interjected quickly as Jack raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Hiccup. “I mean, I _do_ ask them for some help, and they know that I’m not at tier six armour yet. Haha, Trilly _definitely_ knows that I’m not at tier six because he’s responsible for healing me when we go and do guild runs, and holy _shit_ do I go down spectacularly now. Turns out an under-equipped cloth armour character doesn’t have as much ability to stay alive as a max level, highest-gear platemail dude.” Hiccup sighed. “And they’ve offered to help out, but I also don’t want to bankrupt them. Jess just finished her _own_ armour set and that’s why I’m so low, and the rest of the guild is as well.”

Jack rubbed lightly at his temple and he let out a small breath, but his was solely from taking in too much information and emotion all too quickly. That was one of the things that Hiccup loved about his fiancé (one of the nigh infinite things)—that seemingly no matter what, Jack would take things seriously and without judgement. He had said once that even if other people were going to call it ‘childish’ or ‘stupid’ to be angry about, that it was real all the same to Hiccup. “Just remember that you play the game for fun. I mean, _yes_ , I know, you want to play the ‘end-game’ stuff. But that’s supposed to be at the end of the game, right? Aren’t you supposed to enjoy them the entire way through?” Jack sat back and dabbed at his face with his napkin. “Just don’t forget that this is how you’re choosing to spend your free time. It’s meant to relax you and give you something to look forward too. Don’t _not_ take it seriously, but also don’t let it become some obligation that you hate doing or the single largest source of anger in your life.”

Hiccup’s took a deep, relaxing breath, and he coated a piece of naan with sauce. “You’re right,” he said at length. “Though I still reserve the right to be angry about it whenever I want to.”

“You wouldn’t be the Hiccup I’m marrying if you didn’t.”

Hiccup laughed. “You know, I’m starting to see why Merida calls us insufferable.”

* * *

Hiccup had a tendency to get... wrapped up in the stuff he was passionate about. Like with studying for tests when he was still in school. It wasn’t that he was a particularly _good_ student; just that he was able to hone in and see nothing but the textbook in front of him. Or, when he had tried that one summer in junior high to become an archer, only stopping when he realised he’d become so invested that he was seeing baby deer running alongside the car and figuring out where the best places to strike would be. Or, when he had first crushed hard on Jack. He’d kind of... literally barged in on Jack and his friend group, and it hadn’t been until two months after he and Jack had started dating that he realised all of his actions at the time had been so incredibly bold that they had been off-putting to everybody except for Jack (a fact which had led him to apologise profusely to anybody and everybody).

The thing of it was, Hiccup kind of tended to dive deep when he decided to dive. Gaming was no different in that respect.

Often times after work, Hiccup would come home and Jack would be finishing up on dinner, or Hiccup would help him to finish up. They’d eat dinner, clean the kitchen together, talk about their days over cups of tea in the living room, and then Hiccup would move to his desktop in the living room while Jack flipped on the television. Even if they were each doing their own thing, it didn’t really feel like they were ignoring each other. They spent time together while they were doing it, and often times they would be distracted by something they could hear from the other person's device.

“I can’t believe you get wrapped up in these kinds of trashy shows, Jack.”

“Says the man who was crying last week when Deliah proposed to Mark at the airport.”

“I told you then and I’m telling you now, it was because I got an epic drop I’d been farming for three months for.”

Jack just nodded as he sank back further into the couch. Save for Olivier fighting with Mark on the television and rapid-fire clicking and typing from the computer, there was more or less quiet for the next half an hour.

“Son of a fuck,” Hiccup mumbled. “OhHHH NO—NOO. FUCK. GET ME OUT OF THERE. SHI— _FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!_ ” Hiccup threw his hands in the air and leaned as far back as he could in the computer chair as he _bellowed_ at the ceiling.

“What just happened?”

“I was trying to clear this minidungeon because the boss drops some really good loot, but I _forgot_ that I don’t have end-game armour and I wiped and now I need to run _all the way_ back to my character and respawn and—”

“Honey, why don’t you call it done for tonight?”

“No can do, dear. Ken and Trilly and getting on now to help me take this out, and I’m not going to bed until I’ve gotten at _least_ fifteen gold.”

Jack just kissed his fiancé’s hair. “Don’t stay up too late. It’s only a Tuesday after all.” Then he left in the direction of the bedroom.

“Alright bitches, you ready to get some ph4t lootz?”

“Hiccup, I don’t understand how you can play on the internet every night and still be stuck in the mid 2000s.”

* * *

Hiccup pulled himself into bed at 1:57am. Jack cracked an eye at him in protest and Hiccup crowded up into his face, barely able to see straight himself.

“Twenty one gold.”

Then he passed out.

* * *

“Ughhhhhhh. This fucking shit doesn’t need to be like this!”

Hiccup felt arms wrap around over his shoulders. “You know, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, I can introduce you to the, uh, NASDAQ and Dow Jones.”

“I have absolutely no interest in stock markets at all.” Hiccup said, blatantly ignoring the trading post price chart and future estimates based on current market trends on the dedicated Gateway to Mora website that was open on his desktop. It probably wasn’t helping that he had two different sites open on two different monitors. And that the game wasn’t open at all. “I’m just here until I can get my armour and then I’m out for good.”

“Drug addicts say that all the time, Hiccup.”

“Listen here you little shit.” But Jack danced out of reach gracefully and Hiccup turned back to his monitor after a moment and crossed his fingers.

“The price is continuing to rise, and it’s really hard to figure out what’s going to happen. The price dropped off a while back, probably because the original guy ran out of money—I mean, of course he did. He’d already bought, like, I dunno even _how_ much gold worth of linen, but it was enough to raise the global price by almost forty silver. But then the price started hiking again a couple of days later. I saw someone post on Reddit that it was probably a couple of people this time around. Something something economics bullshit. But at the very least, they said that the price should go even higher now because multiple people’s money is going into it, at different times in the day, and there’s already uncertainty in the market to begin with. It’s not going to help that all of the comments on the post were about hording their linen until the market stabilised at its high point before selling, so now we’re stuck in an assumptive recession.”

“Do you... even understand most of what you said?”

“Honestly, not really. But I know that I hate this game now because I don’t get to play my Demonologist.”

“Then why don’t you stop playing it? We can go play a board game in the kitchen.”

“You cheat at all of those.” Hiccup clicked on the Gateway to Mora icon and logged himself in. “Besides, there’s only one thing to do, and I’m not giving up. I’m going to make this damn set of armour if it winds up killing me.”

“How about we go have crazy amounts of sex, then?”

“Oh foul temptress, your sexual artes will not prevail over me. I have 140 Resistance and 67 Perception.”

“Now _I_ don’t want to sleep with you.”

Hiccup merely leaned forward, allowing his shirt to hike up his back a little and his butt to shift forward in the seat, making sure it showed it off. “That’s too bad for me, then, I suppose.”

Jack laughed. “You’re such an ass.”

“I’ll just be an hour or two. Then we can discuss the sex bit.”

“Is that marital distress I hear, Hiccup?” Trilly’s voice came through Hiccup’s headset. “If so, I wonder if I couldn’t swoop in and take that fine piece of man off your hands for you.”

“Trilly, it was _your_ mistake to tell me your home address, not mine. Now just help me grind some more gold.”

“Jack must like them bossy, huh?” Hiccup could hear the wink in his voice.

“I can and will block you from the voice server, Ricky.”

* * *

Thursdays were the fucking worst, because they existed. Work had been slow all day, and Hiccup had reached 1:00pm and decided that that was as much as he could take. He put in time off for a half day and drove home. He climbed up the three flights of stairs to the apartment, briefly wondering if Jack had been called in to work today or if he’d be waiting for him at home. All Hiccup _really_ felt like doing right now was taking a nap, and a fiancé to cuddle with during it didn’t sound half bad.

Hiccup opened the door, immediately seeing the shock of white hair over the back of the living room sofa. Jack’s head whipped around so fast he threatened to snap his own neck, and his eyes were wide as they could be. Immediately the screen of Jack’s laptop changed.

“.. Hi...?”

“Hiccup! You’re home! Hey! Hi! How was work?”

“... Jack, what were you doing?”

“Me? Oh. You. I was waiting for you to get home. You know, like I do?”

“Jack, what was on your computer?”

“Nothing.” Jack laughed a bit and Hiccup took a step towards the couch. “It—There’s nothing—” Hiccup took another step. “It was porn! Wildly, horribly kinky porn! Just, stuff that’ll make you vomit if I even try to tell you about it. You caught me, Hiccup. I’m a sexual pervert and I have disgusting fetishes that I’ve been hiding from you for all this time and you’ve—”

“Jack, are you playing Gateway to Mora?”

Jack hung his head in what almost looked like shame. He didn’t say anything, just nodded his head in confirmation.

Hiccup took a shock to the system. “Since when have you played Gateway to Mora? Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“I wanted it to be a surprise. I mean, I realise that it’s a really big thing for you, so I figured I’d give it a try a few weeks ago, so I picked up the base game. And I didn’t buy all of the expansions, just the first once since it was a two-pack with the original and that was all I could find at Target. But I figured I’d let myself get pretty decent at the game and then I’d tell you so we could play together.”

“So that _was_ Citadel of Lamentations. What do you play as?” Hiccup moved around the sofa to sit down next to Jack, who seemed to still be sweating quite more profusely than he should have. He tabbed back to the game, and Hiccup checked it out quickly.

“Dang, you’re already level 57? That’s.. how long have you been playing? And you’re playing a rogue? That’s one of the more difficult classes to play as. How have you been managing?”

“Well, there were a bunch of guides online, and I’ve learned a lot just listening to you all play, so it hasn’t been too terribly bad. I think I’ve gotten pretty decent?”

Hiccup plucked the laptop off of Jack’s lap and began opening the various panels. “You have your traits set, and they make sense. Your armour matches your level, and you’re running a Powerstealth build—interesting choice, but it looks like you’ve got the right setup to manage it. You aren’t in a guild, you’ve—got an impressive amount of achievement points. How’d you get so many?”

“You, uh, probably underestimate how much free time a substitute teacher can have during a single week. But, hey, uh, gimme back the computer and maybe we can pla—”

“Oh, did you know that you have unread mail?” Hiccup opened the mailbox window and read through the first letter. After reading it and rereading it slower this time, he looked over at Jack very slowly, who was biting his lip pretty hard. “Jack? This is an automated letter from the trading post. It says you have a full stack of linen pieces ready to be picked up.” There was a disturbing smile creeping onto Hiccup’s face but he couldn’t bring himself to let it go. “Why do you have 250 linen scraps waiting for you at the trading post?”

“I, uh—I wanted to help you out?”

Wordlessly, Hiccup opened Jack’s inventory. “You have six complete stacks of linen pieces in your inventory.” Jack was visibly wincing now. “Jack, how much linen do you have?” There was a sickeningly sweet tone of Hiccup’s voice.

Silence filled the room before Jack eeked out. “About 24,000 pieces?”

“You have HOW MUCH linen?” Ah, and there was the anger. “Jack, I’ve been saying all this week that I only needed 19,500 pieces left to finish my armour! Why would you be holding this from me?”

“I wanted to wait until the weekend! Then I’d surprise you tomorrow and we could play together all weekend!”

“How did you wind up with so much money?”

“There are some really good guides out there for making money, and I just followed those while I watched television during the day.”

Hiccup turned to face Jack, unsure really when he had gotten to his feet, and realisation dawned on him. “Wait.. how long have you been playing for?”

“About... three weeks?”

“ _You’re the last son of a bitch who has been buying out the trading post!_ ” Hiccup was seething now. “I’ve been wasting so much extra money to buy out everything and rush against the single person who was still keeping the prices hiking, and it turns out that it’s my own fiancé?! I could have been raiding now!” Hiccup threw his arms in the air. “I could have saved at least 2,000 gold so far!”

“Hiccup, it’s... I can give you the 2,000 gold to make up for it...”

“ _YOU HAVE 2,000 GOLD?!_ ”

* * *

Stuart turned to his wife. The movie was almost over but they’d had to pause it for the past couple of minutes. “Do you think we should call the cops?”

“On them? Nah. This happens all the time.”

“Okay, but the one sounds really pissed this time.”

“Oh, he’s always pissed about something or other, right? There’s always noise coming from the apartment.”

“I told the landlord about it and he said he’d talk to them, but I don’t think he ever actually _did_.” Martha snorted in response. “But seriously, do you think we should call the cops? I haven’t heard him this angry ever, and—” there was the sound of thudding against the wall above them “—they sound like they might kill each other this time.”

“Oh, please. They’re only going to kill each other with virtual swords. There’s nothing those two nerds could do to _actually_ hurt one another.” Martha rolled her eyes at her husband. “Here, just turn up the volume a little and we can drown them out.”

* * *

“—AND ANOTHER THING!” Hiccup threw Jack’s pillow onto the living room sofa from the bedroom doorway. “You could have at least _told_ me about it! I wasn’t going to pressure you into _doing_ anything!”

“I just wanted to give you a gift that would be meaningful.”

“YOU COULD HAVE JUST BOUGHT ME FLOWERS!” One of the blankets from the foot of their bed landed on top of the pillow. “I COULD HAVE FINISHED MY ARMOUR TWO WEEKS AGO!” Hiccup looked down at his traitorous fiancé. “You’re sleeping out here until I finish the entire new raid on my Demonologist.”

“Babe, no. Please.”

“If we were already married, I would divorce you right now and take half of your linen pieces in the settlement.”

“It’s just linen—” Jack managed to get out before the bedroom door slammed in his face.

* * *

Jack didn’t remember the sofa being this uncomfortable. He felt sorry for all of the guests he’d ever made sleep on this overnight. Come the morning, he’d go out and buy a new one. But it might have been aggravated by the fact that it wasn’t his own bed, and he knew it, and that his own bed was just behind the wall opposite of him.

He huffed and rolled over onto his back. The analogue clock was too hard to read in the dark, but his impossibly bright mobile said that it was nearing 3:30am. He doubted that he was going to sleep much tonight, and was thankful that he wasn’t scheduled for any work tomorrow. He let out a sigh that turned into a yawn.

There was movement from the bedroom, and Jack watched through sleep-weary eyes as his fiancé (maybe? had Hiccup been serious about the divorce thing?) shuffled towards Jack and pushed him against the back of the couch, making room for Hiccup to climb onto the sofa as well. From the strain of Hiccup’s muscles, it seemed that he hadn’t been able to sleep much tonight, either. This was the first time they’d ever slept separate because of an argument. Which he didn’t want to dismiss as being childish, but which _had_ actually happened when Jack had instead expected it to blow over by bedtime.

Hiccup seemed to relax against Jack’s body, and Jack wrapped his arms around Hiccup where he didn’t hear any protest. After a few minutes like that, a sleepy Hiccup coughed a bit into Jack’s chest.

“You’ll... you’re going to share those linen pieces with me, right?”

Jack smiled and hummed against Hiccup’s head. “Hiccup, I don’t even have a mount in this game yet. I really don’t need all of this linen.”

“M’good,” Hiccup mumbled.

“You’re not really leaving me, are you?” Jack asked after a few moments.

“Mmmm? Oh. God no. You managed to crowd a virtual economy after three weeks of playing. No way I’m letting that kind of skill go.” Hiccup yawned and mere seconds later, he was asleep. Jack smiled into his hair.

The sofa was still incredibly uncomfortable, and he moved the both of them to their bedroom. He felt pretty sure that Hiccup would forgive him in the morning.

Though maybe after he sent his boyfriend a whole lot of clothing.


	4. Sloth (18 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A mug of hot chocolate was just finishing spinning in the microwave when Hiccup’s phone went off. One of Hiccup’s classmates from Calculus 2 lit up the screen of the device, in all of its pixelated glory. Hiccup looked from the buzzing device, to the mug in the microwave, then back to the phone, and sighed deeply.

“Hey Jeremy.”

“Hiccup! Hi! How are you?”

“Well I just got back from OChem, fighting through the subzero arctic, and I was going to have some hot chocolate and watch television, but I’m guessing that won’t be happening.”

“I mean, I just _found_ him.” The reception through the phone was a bit muffled, as though the other boy was speaking through a layer of yarn, which was almost certainly what he was doing. It was hovering around five degrees above freezing right now, and the snow had been falling almost continuously for the past four days. It was high enough now that you could lay down and disappear forever, hidden under the snow tops. Campus administration had already put a tweet out on Tuesday to remind students that they should not drink and walk home drunk, as taking a drunk nap (as drunk people are so want to do) would be a guaranteed death sentence.

Which, naturally. Guaranteed death sentence.

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in Terrance Park, between Daten and the Quad.”

* * *

Hiccup pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance and the hot fog of breath from his sigh lit up his face and blurred his glasses. He liked to think of himself as being a generally supportive boyfriend. And he _was_. Actually, to a fault. Which is how he landed in these kinds of situations.

Because his wonderful, perfect boyfriend Jack really wasn’t all that aware of his own body. He had a misleading, ungodly amount of power and stamina in his tiny wireframe figure, just sitting there at the ready. And he was _really_ good at knowing how to use it. He had joined the parkour club just a few weeks after he and Hiccup had started dating, and everybody that Hiccup had spoken to had raved (with maybe more than a little bitterness) about how talented he was. Hiccup had seen him, and to say that he had been impressed would be an understatement. But Jack didn't seem to have any kind of practical knowledge of his own body. Or, rather, the limitations of his body. Jack was the only person who attended the club practises every day. None of the officers wanted—or even _could_ —attend that frequently. The body has a need to recover after being put through hardship, and most everybody knows when their limits are reached. But Jack... Jack never seemed to be one to know where his threshold for exhaustion was. Either that, or he was too cocky to believe that he had one. With Jack, it was a fifty-fifty bet.

Whether it was with parkour, or partying, or staying up for thirty six hours continuous in order to study for exam week, only to walk in to his dorm and fall asleep curled up on the floor and miss one of the exams, Jack had a habit of expending more energy than his body could handle, and then collapsing wherever he happened to be when it finally caught up with him. Now that they were dating, it was Hiccup’s responsibility to step in and get his boyfriend to a proper bed, so he can actually rest. It was literally the most that he could do for him, considering how Jack dismissed out of hand the idea that he needed to change anything about his behaviour.

Which left Jeremy and Hiccup standing at the base of a tree, struggling to topple Jack off of the branches that he had perched himself on during one of the practise breaks. How he managed to fall asleep with his feet over his head and his neck bent forward was a minor feat of impossibility. But how he had managed to stay balanced on a branch—a branch that was no wider than Jack’s own body—seven feet above the ground while asleep was something so impressive and idiotic, that only Jack would be able to pull it off.

“Hey, do you think if we throw rocks at him, it’ll get him to wake up?” Anna, one of Jack’s clubmates, was already standing at the ready, casually tossing the pebble she had been holding for a few minutes up and down.

Hiccup shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Wow, some boyfriend you are. I’m glad I missed out on my chance at that during Calc.”

“He’s perched in a tree, above ground, in freezing temperatures, barely wearing anything other than UnderArmour. And I’m out here, freezing my nuts off, when I could be sitting by a veritable fireplace of warmth. If it gets him out of the tree, then so be it. If it knocks some sense into him so we don’t need to do this again, well, volley on, Anna.”

* * *

“ _You’re too cruel_ , Hiccup.”

“Oh cut your whining.” Hiccup wanted to hit his boyfriend on the head for good measure, but giving Jack a piggyback ride across campus was already keeping his arms fully occupied.

“You hit me with rocks! When I was _asleep_!”

“ _Anna_ hit you with _a_ rock.” The facts were important here.

“Only because _you_ missed me.” Okay, maybe not _all_ of the facts were important here. “And then I fell down into the snow, and now I’m freezing because of it! Do you know how cruel it is to be woken up with blunt force trauma and immediately dropped into cold storage? I knew what it felt like to be a dead man, Hiccup!”

“You _do_ realise that if you keep doing this kind of thing, you’re going to _actually_ be a dead man, right?” Jack only snorted in response.

“Can’t you go a little faster, then? Apparently I’m dying, after all.”

“I can drop you, Jack.”

“Are you sure you’re not just going to drop me in general? Don’t threaten something you can’t preve— _OH JESUS NO, I’M SORRY_.”

It was Hiccup’s turn to grin as he looped his arms back under Jack’s thighs and continued walking.

* * *

That had to be the gentlest sneeze that Hiccup had ever heard. It was the daintiest thing, like a tiny kitten sneezing, and if Hiccup hadn’t taken Jack’s phone away so he would sleep, he would have been sure that it was a video. Hiccup poked his head in to the bedroom, seeing that Jack was awake.

“Are you... sick?”

“What? No!” Jack had never sounded more indignant in his entire life. As if the very thought that he could even _become_ sick was a disturbing accusation. “I just got dust in my nose.” A very faint but noticeable line of snot threatened to escape Jack’s nose, and he quickly wiped it away. Hiccup outright grinned at it. He’d never gotten to see Jack sick before, and this was almost too good to be true.

“I’m going to go put some chicken noodle soup on the stove and then make you hot chocolate. We’ve got some cold medicine that you’re supposed to spray up your nose when you first get a cold and it makes the cold go away a couple of days faster, apparently.” Hiccup kept talking through Jack’s noises of disgust. “We’ve also got some NyQuil, which unfortunately isn’t DayQuil but is probably just as well because it’ll knock you out and you can get more sleep for it. I can toss your sweats and hoodie into the dryer to warm them up while you take a shower, so you’ve got something nice to step into, and I can give you my little bunny slippers so your toes don’t get cold and—”

Jack was already trying to sit up and get out of bed, which was causing all of the pressure to move to his head and he was grimacing. It was obvious that Jack _didn’t_ get sick often, given that he had no ability to handle himself in this kind of state.

“Okay, well, for starters, absolutely none of that is happening. Except maybe the shower, since I did just come from practise. But no, soup—ewww. Gross. And I’m not going to take a nap during the day. I’ve got stuff I want to do and I need to pick up some things from the store.”

Hiccup walked over and pushed his boyfriend back onto the bed before drawing the blankets up and over him.

“Nah. You’re going to lay your ass down and get some sleep like a normal human being, and in a day or two you can get up and be stupid all over again. But for now, you’re _my_ project, and you’re going to eat so much soup that you get war flashbacks when you look down aisle twelve.”

“Do you.. actually have the aisle numbers memorised?” Jack looked almost worried by the very idea of that. Hiccup rolled his eyes.

“It was a... see, it sounded cool until you questioned it, and you totally didn’t take away what you were—ugh. You’re impossible sometimes.” Hiccup walked to the door. “Now, you’re going to lay in that bed and try to sleep, or you’re going to get up and take a shower and return back here immediately after that. I’ll be back in a few minutes with soup and chocolate.”

“This is a kidnapping! Hostage situation, hostage situation!” Jack was screaming out the door after Hiccup left.

“You make me not want to have children, Jack.” He called back over his shoulder. Jack began to reply something about taking pills again in that case, but he was cut off mid-sentence by a sneeze, and Hiccup marked that up as a decided Haddock victory.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Hiccup was crouching down next to Jack, who was sitting up in bed now but clearly angry about it. “Alright, so I made this with the canned noodle soup, but I added a couple of spices from the pantry for more flavour; a bit of hot sauce because spicy things clear your nose; and an egg, because everything tastes better with egg. Go ahead and eat all of it, I’ve got more in the kitchen for myself.”

Jack looked down at the bowl of soup that Hiccup had placed smugly in the center of his lap. The added twig of parsley floating in the centre had been for show and a cocky reminder of the situation, and it seemed that Jack had gotten the point from the narrowing of his eyes.

“You _do_ know that you can’t eat soup. It’s all a giant liquid. Like I might as well put a straw in this and start slurping it loudly. Or, you could put it in one of the mugs from the kitchen and we could play drinking games with this. Actually, how about we just forget this nonsense and go play drinking games?”

“Jack, you’re going to eat all of this.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m being held against my will right now.”

This would have been annoying for Hiccup if it weren’t also so intensely satisfying to watch his boyfriend be such a petulant child. “Look, you’re going to stay in that bed until you’re better, even if I need to tie you to it.” Oh shit, wrong choice of words.

Not one to let anything go, Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Tie me to the bed, you say? I wasn’t aware you were so kinky, or that sex cured colds.”

“So you _do_ have a cold.”

“No, but _you_ think I do, and _you_ suggested that.”

“Jackson Overland, eat the fucking soup or I’m calling your mother.”

_That_ put the fear of God into Jack, who (with a little grumbling) picked up the spoon and began drinking the soup. If his mother found out about this, there was no way that she wouldn’t side with Hiccup, and there was also a nonzero chance that she would drive all this way—not to coddle Jack, but to chew his ear off and hover around making sure that Jack was _still_ going to do everything that Hiccup told him he had to. Introducing Hiccup to his mother had been the biggest mistake of Jack’s life; they were best buds now, and he was sure they would have each other on speed dial if speed dial were still a thing.

By the time that Jack had finished eating, there was more colour in his cheeks and Jack seemed to _look_ a bit warmer. The snot was running more seriously, though, and Hiccup put the box of tissues next to the bed in an act of mercy (and also sanitation). Hiccup stood up, his knees cracking a bit from the awkward position he’d been sitting in, heading to go to the kitchen and get the chocolate ready.

“Hey, Hiccup?” Hiccup poked his head back into the bedroom. Jack was sitting there, pressing his hand against the side of his head and scrunching his eyebrows. “I’m not _agreeing_ with you that I have a cold, but I _do_ have a lot of pressure in my head right now. Does the NyQuil do anything for that?”

Hiccup smiled and nodded his head. “Yeah. Do you want me to get some?”

Jack let himself lay back down on the bed, looking more committed to keeping still now. “Yeah,” he moaned, probably a bit more pitifully than he actually was _feeling_. “And I also want extra marshmallows in my chocolate.”

“We only have the extra-large ones, and the mugs really aren’t all that big.”

“I know what I’m about, Hiccup. Extra extra-large marshmallows.”


	5. Wrath (19 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup could tell by the sound of keys hitting the padlock that Jack was finally home. He could also tell from the large amounts of swearing making it through the front door and the increasing intensity of the metals clanging together as Jack failed to unlock the door, just how the evening had gone. Which was, unfortunately, just as Hiccup had predicted.

The door flew open and Jack was standing here, scarf wrapped around his neck but jacket unbuttoned, and there were slight tremors of rage that were coursing through him. His hand went out at the last moment, grabbing the edge of the door and keeping it from slamming into the picture frame that was perhaps poorly placed behind a heavy, hinged object. It didn’t look like Jack was even aware he had done this, and it spoke to just how much of a kindergarten teacher he had become that he was subconsciously responding to actions and saving things from being broken.

“I am going doctor, first thing tomorrow morning, and I am getting a fucking vasectomy.” He didn’t bother to take the scarf off before he ripped the jacket from his body. From the force of the movement, it looked like Jack had choked himself rather painfully when the scarf caught on the jacket’s collar, but Jack was too focused on his anger to pay it any attention. “I will never—EVER—become a parent, because then I’ll need to be one of those idiots, one of those imbeciles who have absolutely no educational understanding at even a fundamental level.” Hiccup didn’t really want to point out the obvious to his husband. Trying to dismiss Jack’s anger never worked out in anyone’s favour. Hiccup had learned over the almost decade that they’d been together that letting his husband keep going and encouraging him would wear him out, and then everything would return to normal.

Jack threw his coat at the coat rack. It missed and fell to the floor in a heap, which naturally only made Jack more angry. He stomped over and—with far too much force for hanging a coat on a wooden pole—shoved the clothing back into its place. The scarf was the next to go.

“I have dinner ready for you, in the kitchen.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I made you the casserole with the tater tots on top.”

“I’ll have some tomorrow. I’m not hungry.”

Hiccup sighed as he watched Jack sit down on the couch in the living room, throwing his hands across his chest after a moment. Ten years had trained Hiccup to not smirk when Jack was angry, even though he wanted to smile that his angry husband had absolutely no idea what to do with himself. Too angry for television, too worked up for a book, but not drunk enough to angrily call people. Hiccup approached Jack gently.

“Jack, you’re not going to accomplish anything by starving yourself of—”

“Oh come on, Hiccup. It’s a single meal, I think I’ll be able to survive.”

“Jack, it has cream of mushroom soup in it.”

“I _said_ , I don’t want any goddamn foo— _HICCUP, PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN!_ ”

Hiccup generally had a non-interventionist stand on Jack’s anger. He knew when to intervene, and he knew what to say and what to do. And most of that was just to give Jack comfort when he was angry and let him work things out on his own.

But then sometimes, Jack proved to be kind of shitty at working things out on his own. Hiccup supposed it was only fair to label both of them as being somewhat reckless, but Jack had a much greater tendency to dive into impulsivity. And so sometimes—rarely—Hiccup found himself needing to pick his husband up by the armpits and manhandle him over his shoulder, wearing the other man like a shawl.

Jack, naturally, wasn’t keen on being treated this way. And Jack had fists. Which were beating at Hiccup’s chest and back and arms and, more or less, most everywhere that was within reach.

“HICCUP, I AM _NOT_ PLAYING A GAME HERE. I AM A GROWN MAN, AND I WILL _NOT_ BE CARRIED AROUND LIKE A CHILD.”

Jack _was_ a grown man—a pretty hot twenty-six year old man—but he was also just as skinny as the gangly teenager Hiccup had fallen in love with. Which meant that manoeuvring through the living room and towards the patio doors was a relatively simple task to perform even with Jack on top of him. It took a lot of control, but Hiccup managed to open the glass door to the patio _and_ prevent Jack from banging into anything.

Hiccup hadn’t realised that it had begun snowing, but it snowing wouldn’t have that large of an impact on his plan.

With Jack successfully outside, Hiccup swung him down—the white-haired man still cursing his name and hitting him any place that was within his reach—and pulled at his shirt.

“HICCUP, THIS IS NOT AT ALL WHAT I AM WANTING! THIS IS ME _NOT CONSENTING_ TO THIS HAPPENING!”

Hiccup just hummed his understanding while he removed Jack’s pants from around his ankles, keeping Jack on one foot and hopping—that was how he was able to keep Jack from running away—and threw Jack back over his shoulder while he took off his husband’s socks. With a _very_ livid Jack in nothing left but his boxers, Hiccup picked him back up like the angry cat that he was and, with as much delicacy as he could manage, dragged him over to the edge of the patio, where he gently lowered his husband into the steaming hot tub.

As the hot water hit Jack, he yelped a bit, but the relaxation was instantaneous. Yes, he still had the anger on his face, and he was still protesting, but the ferocity behind all of it was dying off at an exponential rate. His anger was beginning to sound more forced, and his shouts and rantings were beginning to decline into mumbling, then murmurs. His arms were crossed but his shoulders began relaxing.

So Hiccup moved seamlessly onto the next phase of the plan, which was massaging his husband’s shoulders. Jack more or less began to melt. Hiccup’s wrists fell into the water, which made his job perhaps a little more difficult than he would have liked—water wasn’t terribly conducive to a good shoulder massage—but it was a sign that he was doing something right with this.

Jack’s head was resting on the edge of the edge of the hot tub roughly ten minutes later. He hadn’t spoken for about four minutes, and his eyes were open but staring at a far-away place. Hiccup gently patted Jack’s shoulders before releasing him and pulling his hands away. There was an adorable whine that Jack emitted, and it was almost enough to make Hiccup come back, but he had to stay strong if he was going to get to everything he had planned for the inevitable.

This was, after all, to be expected of tonight.

His husband was almost asleep by the time that Hiccup returned. Truth told, Hiccup hadn’t really thought about the danger of leaving a nearly unconscious man in a hot tub unsupervised; he’d kind of expected to not take as much time making the margarita, but the salt had fought against him for staying on the rim, and the ice hadn’t wanted to crush properly.

When Jack looked up, he smiled a very lazy smile, and stretched his arms out to take the drink. He took a huge gulp of it, swallowing it with an incredibly loud sigh, and let his head fall back again. Slowly, it rolled over to look at Hiccup, and he smiled when Hiccup set the plate and fork of casserole down on the side of the hot tub.

“Honestly, what did I do to deserve a husband like you?” Hiccup merely smiled and resumed his massaging, and was only mildly disturbed from doing so when Jack picked up the plate and began to eat.

Parent-teacher nights were always difficult. This was Jack’s fifth year now, so Hiccup had come to expect this of the event, and every year after the first, he’d been completely correct in guessing what was going to happen when his husband finally came home. Invariably, one of the parents of the kids—who were _always_ perfect and wonderful and Jack loved every single one of them—would prove themselves to be either an asshole, highly arrogant, or naive enough about what educators had to do, to the point of being offensive. Perhaps it made sense, to give the parents a little bit of a break. This was kindergarten. For some of these parents, this was their first parent-teacher conference for their first child ever in their first year of _actual_ school. Big steps, and all of that. But that didn’t make it any easier on the teachers. Especially when you lived in a loop where every year, you’d get to meet a _new_ parent—or two, though usually three at least—who went through the same pattern of not knowing yet how to be _entirely_ respectful of their child’s educator.

“Honestly, I think the biggest surprise out of all of it was that Claire’s dad was such an _ass_.” Jack had begun letting a lot of it go a few minutes after he set down his dinner plate, sharing the details of the night aloud. “I mean, she’s such an _incredibly_ sweet girl. And she’s so _polite_ to everybody and to me and to the other kids. And just, her father was this pompous _ass_. Her mother just sat there and didn’t say anything to stop him, and that’s—that’s how you know that she’s been _trained_ to do that. I mean, not by him—not directly, or intentionally, at least. But she’s just kinda given up any real desire to push back against it. I almost lost it on him when he asked why I wasn’t giving enough homework, because he ‘wasn’t going to have his daughter held back a grade, especially not one that wasn’t even _really_ a grade’. I mean, who just _says_ that? Aloud? To somebody else? Who also happens _to_ be _a kindergarten teacher_?” Jack let out a giant sigh, and the tension that had flooded through Jack’s shoulders while he was recounting the story disappeared after a few moments. He leaned his head back against the edge, eyes closed for a while, opening only after a minute to meet Hiccup’s gaze. “Thank you. I’m sorry that I came home like this and made you put up with all of this.”

“It’s alright, Jack.”

“I mean, it isn’t really? It really shouldn’t be your responsibility to handle things like this, and I shouldn’t let you be the last one to see me because then you’re the one who has to deal with all of this in the end and stuff.”

Hiccup just nodded his understanding. He got the gist of what Jack meant, but sleepiness and emotional exhaustion had begun to take their toll on Jack’s ability to express himself.

“Jack, everybody has to deal with a lot of shit. And sometimes, it gets to be way too much for us to handle, and it just kinda... bleeds everywhere—don’t _laugh_ at that, that’s not supposed to sound like that. But you’re human, and you experience anger, and it’s normal for it to be overwhelming sometimes and just kinda get like this. That’s part of what I signed up for when I started dating you. And I would have signed up for it with anybody else I dated—you know, if you hadn’t managed to snipe me up first and put a ring on me.”

“Damn right I did. And look at me now—I have a sexy as fuck husband who made me dinner and got me drunk in a hottub while giving me a massage. I made absolutely no mistakes in marrying you.”

Hiccup beamed. But he reeled it back in. Part of being witty and sarcastic was not letting Jack see Hiccup for the giant goober that he actually was underneath the surface.

“Here, come on. It’s time for you to go to bed.” Jack stuck his hands in the air and Hiccup rolled his eyes before grabbing his husband’s forearms and pulling him out of the water. He wrapped a towel around Jack and began to gently lead him towards the door to the house. “You go ahead and climb into bed. I’m going to get you some ice so you can cool down faster.”

Jack was smiling an adorable smile, as though the anger from just half an hour ago were entirely forgotten—which, perhaps it might have been. Jack leaned up and put a kiss on on Hiccup’s cheek before he took a step towards the bedroom, turned around and waggled his eyebrows. “You wanna have some fun tonight?”

“How about when your body temperature is back to normal.” Hiccup rolled his eyes at his husband, yelling after him as he cackled and ran into the bedroom. He grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and wet a washcloth with cold water, and poured Jack a glass of cold water just for good measure. His husband would be asleep long before his body was back to normal, which was exactly what Hiccup was intending.

Jack needed a good night’s rest.


	6. Envy (20 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “So, Jack. That new girl in history.”

“Kendra?”

“Yeah. She’s the one.” Merida was leaning forward over the lunch table, food forgotten on the plate. She gave off the air of someone who was about to dive into something they really wanted to know about, and Hiccup had an awful feeling about what was coming. The bottom of his stomach had already dropped out from the initial question, and he wanted to signal to her to just... not ask. Please. Just for her to not ask what he _knew_ was going to come next.

“She’s pretty cute. What do you think about her?”

Hiccup kept a trained face and if he were in the theatre now, he would be proud at how his smile never wavered, never faltered. He was a professional. Nothing would break through his outward composure, even if it tore him up inside.

“Uhh. I’m not sure?” Jack threw a french fry into his mouth. “She _did_ only just transfer here today. I mean, she looks like she’d be a nice girl, but so do you, and you’re, well, you.” Merida rolled her eyes, not even pretending to take the insult as anything other than second-rate mockery.

“But do you think she’s _cute_?”

“Oh! A cute girl? What does she look like?” Rapunzel looked so eager to take part in the conversation now, and even seemed to be genuine about it. Hiccup knew what was going on. Everybody in the school—even the people he’d never met, who didn’t know his name, who had only briefly seen him in passing and would consider him a background character in their dreams years from now—knew that Hiccup had a painfully obviously crush on his best friend. Obvious because of, well, the fact that everybody in the school knew about it. And painful because Jack neither knew about it nor reciprocated it.

Not that Jack was an easy boy to read. The four of them had been best friends for five years, since the start of middle school, and none of the three of them knew anything about Jack in a personal sense. He’d eventually warmed up enough to tell them about himself, but he’d never once mentioned anything that led into the realm of romance or love. He was a completely unknown entity. He was a curiosity. And for Merida and Rapunzel, he was the ideal person for Hiccup because they were Hiccup’s friend and they wanted both boys to be happy, and for some impossible reason they were convinced that Hiccup would be enough to make Jack happy.

And for Hiccup, he wanted to be together because of Jack’s jawline. And because of that dopey, stupid-looking smile he made milliseconds before he laughed. Because of his cheek bones. And because of the way that he stayed up past midnight chatting with Hiccup online when Hiccup had put his project off until the last night, and then would came in the next morning with a bag of nachos because Hiccup had said off-hand that he liked nachos. Because of Jack’s eyes and because of the way that Jack always made sure Hiccup was involved when he wanted to be, and was always safe and removed when Hiccup was overwhelmed. Because of Jack’s shoulders and taut neck and chest and legs, and because Jack always _knew_ , without ever speaking a word, when Hiccup was overwhelmed. There was nobody who knew Hiccup better than Jack. Jack could read all of Hiccup. Except for the crush.

Which left the question, late at night, as to whether he actually didn’t know about the crush, or if he did know but was saving Hiccup the pain of knowing what the answer would be.

“Uh, brown hair, about yay-long, and she kinda has a narrow face and round ears.”

“But is she _cute?_ ” It was Rapunzel’s turn to ask the question. Hiccup wasn’t sure if he wanted to slap them both, or just get up and leave before he heard the answer, whichever way it would go.

And—Hiccup’s stomach sank far and the food in his mouth turned sour. There was a definite blush creeping across Jack’s pale skin. “Why are you asking me? I mean, yes, she’s cute, but you and I are both in that class together so I don’t know why you’re picking on me.” Hiccup tried desperately to believe that the blush was only because of the attention. Jack hadn’t gone with very much attention before he’d all met them; he was never all that great being at the centre of it.

Merida sat back and groaned, and Rapunzel sat forward to take control. “Because, you know—new student, cute girl, maybe you find that you have a crush and love blossoms and you ask her awkwardly to the dance and we celebrate your first kiss afterwards even though by all accounts it went horribly.” Hiccup blinked away the threat of tears in his eyes. This—this was the cruellest thing that they’d ever done to him. They _knew_. They fucking knew.

“I don’t have a crush on her,” Jack insisted, his voice dropping off immediately after.

“Well then, do you have a crush on anybody?”

Jack didn’t make a comment, just let his face turn more red as he looked down to examine his Styrofoam plate. His fingers were shaking a bit when he went to pick up another french fry as nonchalantly as possible.

Hiccup thought he could sit there, thought that he was strong enough. But he wasn’t. He was an actor but he wasn’t perfect. And right now, he didn’t care to be perfect. He didn’t really want anything, other than the promise of a dark room tucked behind the theatre that he could sit in and allow himself to cry in, so that nobody else could see.

With trained control, he quickly stood up and excused himself, rushing away as fast as he could before any of his friends had the ability to protest. He knew they’d know all of his hiding spots, except this one. This one he kept secret, because even friends were sometimes enemies.

* * *

“So. Uh.” Hiccup was forcing himself to do this. Even if he had a crush on Jack, he was Jack’s best friend and best friends supported each other at any and all times, no matter what. “You’ve got a crush. I haven’t heard about this before. What’s up with that, Jack? I thought we were friends here.” He tried to ignore that his laugh sounded a bit dull and more than a little forced.

Hiccup knew that Jack was hoping that he could blame the cold for tucking himself further into his blue hoodie as they waited in the parking lot afterschool. Hiccup chose to be courteous, though, and continued looking out across the asphalt, not forcing either of them to make eye contact.

He also wasn’t sure he could do this if he were facing Jack.

“Well, you know. It’s, uh, I mean, it’s new.” Jack was sputtering a bit, and his voice was fast and then slow. “I mean, I don’t really—feel comfortable talking about it. I mean, I also don’t even know if it _is_ a crush. I might just think they’re cute, and want to spend more time with them than I do, but I can’t, you know, _know_ for sure.”

No. He definitely couldn’t do this facing Jack.

“Yeah man, but I didn’t know the first thing about it. Hell, I could share all of my classes with her. Here I could be playing the ultimate wingman like a best friend should. You know, best friends are a great resource for dating, and I don’t want to brag or anything, but I think I’d be able to do it pretty well.”

Jack was silent for a while, and only spoke quietly a long moment after. “Thanks, but I don’t really think I want anything to happen. I kinda... didn’t _want_ any of you guys to know. I mean, not that I don’t _like_ you all or anything. I just... wanted to keep this to myself, and I didn’t really want to answer the question at all, but I guess not answering the question _was_ answering the question. Fucking Merida..”

Hiccup hummed in total agreement. “Fucking Merida.” The boys descended into amicable-if-not-slightly-tense silence. But Hiccup’s mind was racing, wanting to know everything. Wanting to know who Jack had a crush on, wanting to know her name; wanting to know what she looked like; wanting to know what Jack’s type was, and to know how he could manipulate that in his dreams so that in a different reality, Hiccup might be the one there instead, at the centre of that affection. Hiccup supposed he also had a thing for torturing himself. In a masochistic way, maybe pain reminded him that he was still alive.

“Well, okay, I mean, maybe I can help you get something for them?” Hiccup blurted out before he could stop himself. Which was the worst thing he could have done in the situation but he couldn’t have stopped himself under any circumstances. Helping Jack to love someone else was the closest he would ever get to knowing Jack’s love himself. “So, I mean, like, uh, you know, getting them like a courting gift or something—I mean, like, something to tell them that you like them. Not a courting gift—we don’t exactly _do_ courting gifts anymore, that’s, uh, I’ve probably been in the theatre for too long recently.” Hiccup let out a nervous laugh and did his best to cut himself off from speaking any more.

Jack just remained quiet.

“I don’t really want to do anything about his, Hiccup.” He sounded defeated, and sad, and embarrassed. “I just want to wait for this all to blow over and let the whole thing— _whatever_ I’m feeling—just go away. I don’t want everybody making a big deal over it, because nothing is going to come of it and it’ll just be easier that way, okay?” Something in Jack’s tone resonated with Hiccup, in a way that would take him until he fell asleep to realise: the sound of hurt, when somebody else had pried too far into somewhere that you didn’t want them too. Into somewhere that you didn’t want them to be, and you were left vulnerable and exposed and afraid.

* * *

It was after school, a couple weeks later. Best friends were supposed to help each other to get the girl, if movies and Nickelodeon teen shows were anything to go by. But Hiccup respected Jack enough—and _cared_ for Jack enough, in so many ways—that if Jack wanted the space and the privacy of ignoring the crush, then Hiccup would give it to him.

And, in a way, that made it easier on Hiccup. For whole days at a time, he was almost able to forget about the fact that it _was_ there at all. He could go about his normal day, and still lean against the kitchen counter while washing the dishes, when his mother was out of the room, and hold his own hand and close his eyes and imagine what it would be like if Jack had just returned home from work and swept him aside to kiss him and hold him as though they’d always been apart, even if it had only been since morning. He could let himself dream, whether awake or asleep, and to place himself as the object of Jack’s affection.

Always—invariably—the reality would come back to Hiccup: that there was somebody else who would be receiving all of this from Jack, somebody who wasn’t Hiccup. But dreaming was all he had left, and in his dreams and mind, Jack was his and he would say the sweetest things to him, and Hiccup _knew_ what it felt like to be loved.

He knew what it felt like to be able to love somebody else with all of his heart and all of his soul, and these daydreams let him know what it felt like to be given the most precious gift in return.

It had been a long day for Hiccup. He’d woken up from a dream about Jack, where they were together. A dream strong enough and happy enough and intimate enough that before he opened his eyes, before he checked the clock, before he acknowledged that he was in the waking world, he reached for Jack laying beside him, the boy’s name on his lips. There was nothing but empty air in the cold room. Every class with Jack today had been worse, because he couldn’t wash away the feeling of what it had felt like to feel Jack’s bare skin pressed up against him as they clung to each other, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt to fall asleep to Jack whispering Hiccup’s name into his ear.

It was too much and Hiccup wished he could say there wasn’t bitterness at the core of his words when he spoke now, but the best that he could hope for was that the bitterness didn’t show itself to Jack. He could keep this contained. That was his gift to Jack.

“So. I know you didn’t want me to talk about it, but I really just—I’m curious. I just want to know if it’s anybody in our classes. You don’t have to tell me her name or anything, or even describe her. I just kinda wanna know who you find to be attractive, y’know?” Hiccup laughed, and he hoped that his body hadn’t fidgeted as badly from the stress as he had thought it had. A whole day of pain had lead to this moment here, in the locker bay, as the last of the students filed out towards the buses that neither Jack nor Hiccup rode. “I mean, we’ve been friends for years and I don’t know anything about you or who you like or anything, and I don’t even know who to picture you with when I think about us all grown up, living across from each other. Maybe with that secret tunnel under the street that we talked about back in fifth grade.”

“Hiccup...”

“No, I mean, I’m sorry. I just, I’m curious, y’know? I mean, I assume she’s pretty and everything, but there are a ton of girls who meet that description, and those are just by, y’know, _my_ standards. And your definition of pretty might be a totally different person all together. So I just—” Hiccup threw a hand up in what he hoped would be interpreted as a lighthearted gesture.

“Hiccup...” Jack repeated. His voice fell even quieter. “I... you don’t...” Jack took a breath. “You just...” Jack looked down. “You keep assuming that it’s a girl.”

The wind was knocked out of Hiccup. “O-oh.” A slight tremor coursed through him. “O-oh. I mean, that’s—that’s totally okay. I mean, that’s, yeah. You didn’t... I’m sorry I pushed you into sharing something you weren’t comfortable with yet. Or at all. That—that was rude of me. Not that I judge you—I’d never judge you, you know. You’re my best friend and I love you no matter what—” Hiccup couldn’t believed those words had slipped out of his mouth but he knew what he had meant “—and I’m not going to look at you any differently at all or anything and I’m not going to tell Merida or Rapunzel or anybody and actually, I’m just going to shut up now, if that’s okay.” Hiccup gave a nervous laugh, and Jack responded in kind, but didn’t look up from his feet.

And as Hiccup laid in bed that night, he knew that he should feel happy. Jack liked boys as well. Maybe he _only_ liked boys, like Hiccup did, or maybe he liked girls as well. But Jack liked boys, and that should have been the greatest victory for Hiccup.

He sobbed harder into his pillow. He was doing his best to control the sounds he was making, but he could hear some of them hitting his ears and he knew how he sounded. But he just couldn’t stop. It hurt so _badly_. Because before, he could blame Hiccup never having a chance with Jack to the fact that Jack could never like him because of his gender. Even if it broke his heart, he still could look at the reality and know that, in the end, what was keeping him from ever being with Jack was that men simply didn’t overlap with Jack. But that wasn’t how it was anymore. Jack liked boys, and that meant that it was no longer the case that Jack wasn’t with Hiccup because of how deep Hiccup’s voice was, but rather because Hiccup’s voice didn’t sweep him off his feet. He wasn’t with Hiccup not because Hiccup had a flat chest, but because he didn’t find Hiccup’s body to be attractive to his standards. He wasn’t with Hiccup not because Hiccup had male genitalia, but because Hiccup couldn’t make Jack’s heart race faster than anything, and he didn’t give Jack life and happiness and promise and future.

Before, Hiccup had known that Jack would never be with him because of something that Hiccup could never control.

Now, he knew that Jack would never be with him because Hiccup wasn’t good enough.

Hiccup sobbed louder into his pillow and ignored how the fabric rubbed at his raw eyes. Jack was the worst friend Hiccup could ever have.

Jack wouldn’t allow Hiccup to have even this one tiny consolation.

* * *

After that incident, Hiccup became quiet around Jack, at least in regards to Jack’s personal life. Things had been awkward between them the following day, until Hiccup had put his hand on Jack’s shoulder at the end of the day, turned him to look into his eyes, and told him that everything was okay. Hiccup had somehow managed to convey enough of his own emotion into it to let Jack believe, and things picked up again after that. By the end of that week, it was as though nothing had happened.

Hiccup would cry occasionally at night about it, but he did his best to steel himself to the pain going forward. It was harder some days than others, but Hiccup told himself that this was what life meant, and that this wasn’t going to be the first nor the last time that someone would hurt him. That didn’t invalidate what he was feeling, but he wanted to ground himself in the reality that life did and was going to continue to hurt him and that he couldn’t roll himself over and wither away.

Reminders of all kinds for the upcoming dance were plastered all around the school now, and neither Merida nor Rapunzel nor Hiccup had received any form of invitation from anybody. Rapunzel and Merida seemed unaffected by it entirely, and it left Hiccup to wonder how both of them were as strong as they were, completely indifferent and not needing to define their self-worth by what other people thought of them. Hiccup was aware that, being a school dance, it was _his_ obligation to be the one inviting the girl—or the guy, in his particular case—but Hiccup couldn’t bring himself to do it. He knew who he wanted to go with, and he wasn’t able to. The thought of taking somebody else to the dance and pretending that he was over his feelings for Jack—that any random boy could replace Jack—hurt him in ways he couldn’t quite identify.

Jack, of course, received a number of invitations. Which was perhaps an odd thing for a guy to be receiving the invitations, but Jack’s shyness was about as well-known around the school as his sex appeal and cute looks. Hiccup knew that he shouldn’t, but he took personal pleasure every time that Jack awkwardly and nervously declined a girl’s invitation. Outwardly, Hiccup remained aloof, sometimes pretending only to barely hear the conversation. But inwardly, he heard everything that Jack said and he _relished_ every word from his lips.

He almost cried with joy when Jack turned down the one boy who was brave enough to ask Jack as well.

* * *

As Hiccup had perhaps expected, none of them attended the dance with partners. Hiccup had been dreading, up to the point when he had met Jack outside the school, that Jack would have asked the boy he had a crush on to go with him to the dance. But Jack was standing alone, and when Merida and Rapunzel showed up ten minutes later (as fashionably late as they joked was the responsibility of their gender), they went inside without a second’s hesitation on Jack’s part.

The inside of the school, decorated though it was, was nevertheless tacky. There was no hiding the fact that it was a high school no matter how many black curtains the dance committee had hung from the ceiling. In fact, Hiccup made a mental note to himself that he needed to get his math textbook from his locker before he left if he wanted to turn in his homework on Monday. But the assembly hall had food and had drinks, and that was enough for Hiccup.

He secretly wished that the drinks would have alcohol in them, so that he wouldn’t need to deal with the whole night sober, even if this would mark his first night drinking. But the drinks weren’t spiked and so Hiccup dealt with making awkward small-talk by the side of the dancefloor, the conversations mulling about as they talked about how cliche and dumb school dances were, completely ignoring the irony of them having paid to attend one.

Standing to the very edge of the room proved to be in their favour, though, as a couple of students slipping out of the doorway and through the curtains caught Merida’s eye. None of the four of them needed to ask; they all moved in unison and passed behind the veil with none of the chaperones any the wiser.

It turned out that they had lucked into a miniature rave, held in prime location under one of the far staircases. The stereo system was a portable phone speaker and the lights were glowsticks that the small group of kids were twirling over their heads. Looking at it all, it was perhaps very embarrassing, but the four of them were welcomed in by the partiers with no problems. The music was pretty shitty, but the music in the assembly hall had been as well, and here Hiccup was able to pretend that the knots in his stomach and the shivering of anxieties that would course through his limbs were because they could be caught by the chaperones and not because of how gorgeous Jack looked in a suit or how he looked just as he did in so many of Hiccup’s dreams.

“Would you like some of this?” One of the boys that had been dominating the makeshift dancefloor extended a water bottle towards Hiccup and the group a few minutes after they had arrived.

“No thanks. I’m not thirsty.”

“Oh.” The boy looked down at the packaging on the bottle for a moment, and then looked up as though he had realised his mistake. “You do know it’s not actually water, right?”

That was the point in the night where things changed. They danced looser, and freer, and even Hiccup managed to warm up to the situation, enjoying the music which either steadily increased in quality or became better with alcohol. He ignored the sweat that was building around his temples, and at some point he had managed to find himself with two glowstick necklaces set around his neck and one on the crown of his head. He had been declared the dance fairy, and he chose to ignore the potentially offensive slur as most of the others weren’t aware. More or less, at least.

But eventually, the chaperones _did_ find them, and their small group was lucky enough to have hid the multiple now-empty water bottles on top of the lockers seconds before the parents rounded the corner. It was an end to the party, and their fellow ravers dispersed into the official crowd or left for the main entrance. The one benefit out of it all—other than the free alcohol, which tasted perhaps a bit better than Hiccup had expected alcohol would, though it stung more as well—was that the time passing had filled the assembly hall with more students. It was no longer as awkward to be inside the room, as they were able to stand out of view and be completely invisible.

There were so many people in the centre, dancing to the music—dancing horribly, in equal parts because they were awful dancers and because the music playing wasn’t meant to be danced to. The alcohol must have begun to wear off, because Hiccup was certain that the trance music coming from a sophomore’s iPod was better than the professional DJ’s.

Conversation wasn’t important at this point. They picked at the food on the table like vultures and they watched the crowd and joked and talked as though they were sitting at their lunch table. But the alcohol had been strong enough and plentiful enough that words weren’t conveying much, and they relaxed on being together to bring comfort and enjoyment. Hiccup knew that it was also to blame on the alcohol, but he also had never been aware of himself without being overwhelmed with sadness and _worry_ to really realise how much he loved his friends.

The lights dimmed, and at first Hiccup thought that it was like theatre performances—the show was over and it was time to leave. He felt relieved that the night was finally finished, but the music didn’t stop. The tempo turned slower and everybody on the dancefloor seemed to understand that they should pull each other closer. Hiccup tried to ignore the way his heart clenched up.

And so he almost punched Jack in surprise when he felt a hand clasp around his wrist. Both boys seemed shocked by the situation, but Jack was the first to recover. His face was scarlet, even in the low lighting, and he was doing his best to keep his face forward without making eye contact with Hiccup. Hiccup watched his lips moved slightly, opening and closing as he struggled to find the right words.

In the end, the right words were simply: “It might be the alcohol talking, but—would you like to dance? With—with me, I mean.”

Hiccup’s heart stopped beating altogether. There had been so many daydreams, so many scenarios of Jack confessing everything to Hiccup, and none of them had prepared him for this moment, where Jack was physical and his skin a little coarser than he had imagined and the sweat on his palm all the more endearing. And he couldn’t believe what he was going to say.

“That’s—that probably is just the alcohol talking.” And he might have been kind enough to stop Jack from any hurt feelings or embarrassment, but it didn’t mean that Hiccup could take it in stride. He didn’t want to ruin their friendship by letting Jack see Hiccup as a last resort for when the person he wanted wasn’t around.

Jack’s shoulders slouched forward and a look of dejection crossed his face. Hiccup immediately regretted his decision, but he bit his tongue and allowed Jack to retract his grip and put his back to the wall again. Hiccup closed his eyes and did his best to keep the tears from being too visible. He knew that he couldn’t hide all of them. Jack would know. But he could at least keep some of his pride intact.

“You know, no—it’s—yes, it’s the alcohol talking, but it’s _me_ talking as well, and the alcohol only gave me the courage to actually _say_ what I wanted to say.” Jack was facing Hiccup again, and he looked more determined than Hiccup had ever seen him before. His face looked fierce in an effort to fight off tears as well. “Hiccup. Would you please dance this song with me?”

He was holding his hand out for Hiccup. It was just inches in front of him. He knew that Merida and Rapunzel were watching; knew that their mouths were hanging open, speechless. He knew that there was no going back from this moment. But he also knew that Jack had made the largest risk he could possibly have been asked to make, and that it had all been for Hiccup.

And only for Hiccup.

He let Jack lead him to the dancefloor, both boys shaking visibly, and when they reached the edge, their feet knocked together and their heads bumped in their mutual awkwardness. There was deflected laughing, but it didn’t change the fact that neither boy knew how to dance, and neither boy knew how to do any of _this_. They both looked around—mostly in order to avoid looking at each other—and slowly they moved closer and wrapped their arms around each other.

And they danced. Not like they had danced earlier. Not like Hiccup had imagined them dancing. They swayed in place, barely matching the rhythm of the music, and both of them were polite to not comment on how feverishly their hands were trembling on the centre of each other’s back.

“You, were, uh—” Jack was stammering and Hiccup was lucky that the other boy’s mouth was aligned with Hiccup’s ear because it was barely more than a choked whisper. “You were—uh, are—my, well, you’re the guy I had a crush on.”

Hiccup could feel the smile on his face, knew it was too large to fit, but he couldn’t control it. He could only look up at Jack and smile, ignore that for once the tears in his eyes were from something that made him feel warm inside.

Jack’s lips tasted just like Hiccup’s dreams had told him they would.


	7. Pride (21 December)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
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>   
> 

Hamish banged his fingers against the table, the digit bending unnaturally. A teardrop fell on the wooden workbench, then another. But he had been already been crying. The crying was only spurring him on to move faster. His hands were shaking—trembling—and it kept him from being able to cover his mouth to stop the whimperings and the noises from coming out. He could no longer keep them at bay, with the weight of what was happening, the weight of what he was doing, and the impact of what would happen to him in whatever future sank in. It was threatening to crush him into the wooden floor, tempting him with the release of death. Tempting him _with_ death. Because Hamish held no illusions about what he was doing and what he was committing to. He was committing to death. And it was a good thing that he was unable to cover his mouth with his hands, because if he could, he would only be able to collapse in the corner and cry. He wasn’t strong enough to do this.

A sound outside, a rustling in the early autumn leaves. Hamish’s heart froze in his chest, and he did his best to control himself and make no noise. Tears were streaming down his face in fear now, and he allowed himself the brief reprieve of comfort by gripping his mouth, under the pretence that it would prevent him from being found.

“ _Hamish—?_ ” A whisper came through through the glass window to his left, and he let out a low whine as the pent-up fear escaped his body in a rush and some semblance of relief came to replace it. He would never be relieved, and he would never again not be scared of everybody else, but if this was going to happen—which it was—then Hamish could not afford to be afraid of him.

“Jackson.” Hamish breathed and opened the door to the workshop. Jackson was standing on the threshold outside. The earthy brown tones of his clothing and his hair letting him mostly blend in with the worn dirt path connecting the workshop’s backside to the town streets. A large hump was protruding from behind beneath his beloved brown cloak; he had already finished packing the sleeping materials and a few scant pairs of clothing.

Hamish saw Jackson’s free hand shaking as well and it gave him more comfort than he felt he had any right to feel. But there was comfort all the same in knowing that he wasn’t alone in being scared.

“I’m almost finished in here,” Hamish heard his voice saying, even though he wasn’t aware of speaking. “I have most of the tools gathered, but I’m having a hard time trying to fit a saw in there. It doesn’t want to fit, and I so desperately want to leave it behind because it will cause too many problems at this rate, but no saw means no wood and no wood means death.”

Jackson nodded and made no offer to help him, knowing better than to get in Hamish’s way and slow him down with his task. He stepped inside the workshop wordlessly behind the blacksmith, allowing the door to close behind him. Darkness enveloped him in the shadows once more, and he felt safer.

That was how Jackson knew that they were doing something horrible in the eyes of God—that he was taking comfort in the shadows. But he looked over at Hamish as he was working and swallowed deeply. And he tried his best to forget of God for the moment. There would be time enough, with any stroke of luck, to make amends. But Jackson couldn’t not do this. He couldn’t put it off any longer and hope that this wasn’t where his destiny was.

Hamish forced the saw into his own bag, fingers still trembling wildly as they fumbled with tying knots in the rope to secure it to the outside. He had needed to wrap the saw in cloth twice-around in order to make sure that it wouldn’t cut through anything while they moved. He reached for the cup of water that he kept on the corner of the workbench absentmindedly, as he always did whenever he was working, but it wasn’t there. And that was perhaps what drove it home first, that everything he had ever known was no longer going to be there. All at once it became too much and he fell to his knees, shoulders wracking with sobs as he tried his best to cover his mouth and prevent any noise from leaving.

Jackson was there by his side, wrapping himself around Hamish’s shoulder in a comforting way but he pulled Hamish to his feet at the same time. There wasn’t time for waiting any longer. They needed to go. But Jackson’s presence reminded Hamish that he wasn’t alone. Jackson would always be there for him. That was why he was doing this.

That was why _they_ were doing this.

Following after Jackson, Hamish slipped into the darkness of the night that had blanketed the town. They were lucky that the chill of the Burgess autumn nights had not yet really begun to set in. Leaving with winter only a few months away was not ideal but it was their own choice now, spurred on by events that they could neither have prevented nor have known of earlier in the summer when the weather was right. It was perhaps a dose of luck that they at least were being saved from needing to leave once the snow had begun to fall, when survival outside was no longer a possibility.

“Where is Astrid?” Hamish asked as he closed and locked the back of the workshop.

“She’s over this way.” And the shadow that represented his best friend moved to the right, hugging against the wooden walls and peaking down the alley between the workshop and the supplies building before crossing between it. Hamish made his way after Jackson, and they traversed the silent town in similar manner.

When Astrid walked out in front of them, the boys both gasped far louder than either had wanted to. Their nerves were the only things they could feel left of themselves.

“I have as much food as I could find to bring for you. There are potatoes and corn, other vegetables; some breads, though taking too many would be a foolish move; some grains for planting when you find fertile soil, God willing; and just a bit of smoked meats. I hope that this will be enough for you, to keep you safe.” She passed the large burlap sack the short distance between them into Jackson’s outstretched arms.

“Astrid, you are far better than we deserve—far better than I _ever_ deserved.” Hamish fought off the tears as he moved closer and embraced his childhood friend. Astrid gripped at his back, making sure to avoid the pack sitting just atop his cloak, and held him in a tight embrace. Hamish could feel her shaking with something more than the cold, but when they pulled apart, her eyes were still dry.

“Stop your crying, you.” She smiled at him, and it seemed weak and a bit forced, but Hamish knew there was compassion behind it. “The last thing I want to remember you as is a tearful child. Be strong. For me, if for nobody else. Let me have that comfort when I lay awake at night and think of you two.” Hamish straightened himself up and held his head back; the change in his posture somehow brought more calm to him.

“And you.” Astrid turned to Jackson. “You’re taking my best friend from me. Forever. From this point, there is nothing more that I can do to help him. But he is so very precious to me, and I’m entrusting you to watch over him and protect him from everything that comes at him.”

Jackson nodded his head. “I promise, to all of my ability and beyond if necessary, that I will keep him safe above all else.”

Astrid nodded and smiled more emphatically at that. “Good.” She swallowed before looking back at the both of them. “And—you truly are sure about this, right?”

Hamish could sense Jackson turn his head to look at him but Hamish maintained his eye contact with Astrid. “I’m sure. There’s no other option, no other choice for me. For us.” He faced Jackson.

Through Hamish’s eyes, he could see everything that had lead to this moment. The friendship between the townsboy and the travelling merchant’s son. Growing together from a young age when the Overlands had settled down nearby. Spending time together, hiding in the tall wheat fields. Sneaking behind the bakery and stealing sweets from inside. Entertaining the younger children with fantastic stories and wild plays they had both concocted. The hugs, and then—

The kiss. The unknown afterwards, the feelings and questions through both of them. And then, the second kiss. The third. And the intimate embrace. The nighttime adventures beyond the town, far enough away that they could hold hands and dance under the moonlight until they fell asleep and curled next to each other for warmth and comfort. And the indescribable, unnamed feeling that grew between the two of them.

One of the fisherman’s apprentices. Hamish’s mother standing over him, his face red from where his father had hit him with everything he had. The pastor holding a sermon just for him, asking: ‘ _Do you presume to know better than God Himself? That He cannot see every sin you make? That a life of sin and disgusting perversion is better than the path that He chose for you? Do you believe you are better than He is?_ ’. The fear afterwards. Not seeing Jackson. Trying to tell himself to change, trying to tell himself to pray harder.

Not being able to.

Seeing Jackson across the town streets, head bent over in uncharacteristic gloominess, always under watchful eye of his mother, never without escort. Catching his eye as he walked past and knowing that he, too, would never be able to change. Never be able to pray harder than he was now.

Both boys knowing that there was perhaps some small, unforgivable part of them that told them they didn’t want to pray any harder.

Hamish nodded to Astrid, determination set on his face. “I’m sure,” he repeated. “I will spend a lifetime praying for God’s forgiveness, though I know I don’t deserve it and will likely never find it. But I am sure about this all the same.”

Astrid nodded in response, her strength and resolve lending some of itself to Hamish. “Then, as sad as I am, I am happy for you. I hope that you find somewhere where you will be happy.” She kissed him gently on the cheek. “Your happiness is all I’ve ever wanted for you.” This time, when she pulled back, there were tears threatening to fall. “Now. Go. Head down to the south, towards the mountains. You should have enough food to be able to make it to the forest just beyond.”

Jackson and Hamish stood there a moment. “ _Go_. Go on, you two. All the more chance to put space between you and the town before dawn rises.” With that, the two boys began off in the direction that she had pointed them, blending themselves in with the tall grass as they approached the outskirts of the town.

Hamish looked back towards Astrid, and towards his family, and towards the only home that he had ever known, and he struggled to stay strong. Astrid stood there, face no longer visible enough to read, watching in their direction as they left.

“Come. Hamish.” A little lower: “It’s easier if you don’t look back.” Hamish took a deep breath.

Jackson reached out and took Hamish’s hand into his own, squeezing for reassurance. Hamish turned his head and followed after Jackson in the direction of the mountains. And then, beyond that, the forest.

And beyond that, only God knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! It was so hectic trying to get seven different stories planned, written, and revised in a two week period, but this has been so incredibly fun and rewarding and I'm so thankful to all of you (as I am with all of my fics)! Happy Holidays! (if I don't see you sooner ;) )


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